Arthur Rosenberg 1934
After two years of war the economic life of Tsarist Russia was completely destroyed, the authority of the ruling caste undermined, and the revolution inevitable. The state finances had been disorganised by the enormous war expenditure and the country was drowning in a flood of paper roubles. Millions of workmen and peasants were continually being withdrawn from their factory benches and fields to make good the wastage in the armies. Food supplies steadily diminished. Rolling stock on the railroads was destroyed through excessive usage and gradually became unobtainable. Despite the assistance received from the Entente powers, Russian industry was in a far less developed state than that of other countries and was scarcely in a position to keep the armies at the front supplied with munitions. In the factories, as on the railroads, raw materials were used up carelessly and extravagantly. Shortage of supplies and difficulties of transport brought starvation and lack of fuel to the great cities. The peasantry were war-weary and desperate; and the feeling engendered in the villages gradually infected the millions of peasants composing the army.
The support of the majority of the army had enabled the Tsarist government in 1905 to stamp out the revolutionary movement. Now hardly a single regiment remained loyal to the Tsar and his government. The populace was resolved on revolution for the purpose of making an end simultaneously of Tsarism and the war. The propertied middle class were also prepared to revolt for an exactly contrary reason. The middle class recognised that the corrupt and incapable Tsarist regime was leading Russia to a catastrophe. The defeats and setbacks of the first three years of war aroused in them the fear that Russia would collapse entirely if Nicholas II and his courtiers remained in control of affairs. Even the reactionary clique surrounding the Tsar gradually came to see that a continuance of the war meant the destruction of all conservative and traditional authority in Russia. From 1916 onwards they strove to achieve a separate peace with Germany.
The liberal upper middle class refused to contemplate peace. After all the sacrifices which the war had entailed upon Russia it was imperative that her war aims should be fulfilled. Instead of retiring from the contest Russia must hold out until the expected victory of the Entente powers brought her Constantinople and the Straits. If, however, the Tsar was planning the betrayal of his country for feudal and dynastic reasons, the middle class would rather overthrow the dynasty than give up its hopes of victory.
The ambassadors of the Entente powers in Petrograd did nothing to oppose a revolution. For a revolution would liberate the middle-class democracies in France and England from their compromising ally, Nicholas II, whose downfall was in any case inevitable. Moreover, the Entente might reasonably hope that a middle-class and liberal Russia would continue to wage war with renewed energy and without any thoughts of concluding a separate peace. Thus it came about that two revolutionary streams merged in the events of March 1917: from below came the movement of peasants, soldiers and workers yearning for peace and for bread; from above that of the liberal middle class seeking victory and conquests. The workmen’s revolution in Petrograd was the signal for a revolt of the entire garrison. In a few days the revolution had spread victoriously over the whole country and reached the armies at the front. The workers and soldiers overthrew the Tsar; the liberal middle class assumed the reins of government. The fall of the monarchy legally involved that of the Russian parliament — the Duma — which was elected in accordance with a cleverly devised reactionary franchise. The liberal members of the Duma, however, set up a committee that immediately became a rallying-point for the middle-class movement. The victorious workers and soldiers in Petrograd established soldiers’ and workers’ councils in accordance with the tradition of 1905. The soviet thus became the rallying-point of the democrats and socialists. Hence the struggle between the two contending currents in the revolution took the form of a struggle for power between the Duma committee and the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
In March 1917, Russia was divided politically as follows. The conservative classes — landowners, nobles, officers and high officials — were to be found in the ranks of the liberal middle-class movement. Reactionaries and liberals were now allies in a battle for the retention of private property and the prosecution of the war to a victorious conclusion. The peasantry and the soldiers, who, being for the most part peasants, shared in their traditions and ideals, supported the Narodniki. The Social Revolutionaries were the leading party in the popular movement. The industrial workers were divided in support of the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. No mention need be made here of the smaller groups and parties. The vast majority of the nation, and its physical force in the form of the army, stood behind the Social Revolutionaries. On their right stood the middle class and on their left the socialist minority. Notwithstanding their power the Social Revolutionaries did not seize the reins of government. Like the Russian Social-Democrats, the Social Revolutionaries were convinced that the Russian revolution must be a middle-class revolution; and for that reason they were prepared to accord the governmental authority to the liberal middle class. They themselves were content to adopt the role of a friendly opposition criticising and controlling the actions of the government and acting as a propulsive democratic force.
The attitude adopted in this question by the Social Revolutionaries was identical with that adopted in 1905 by the Mensheviks. The workers’ and soldiers’ councils were to act as a form of democratic control over the actions of the government and were to be established throughout Russia after the model of the parent council in Petrograd. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils were to be set up in the towns, peasants’ councils in the villages, and soldiers’ councils at the front.
The identity of views between the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks also extended to cover the all-important question of a continuance of the war. The Russian republic was to adopt the solution propounded by the majority in the Zimmerwald Conference, as representative of the socialist opposition in Europe, namely, a peace by mutual agreement without annexations or war indemnities. Russia was to exert her influence in this sense with the Entente nations, as well as with Germany and Austria, in order to restore peace to the world in alliance with international socialism. A one-sided and separate peace on the part of Russia was inadmissible. For such a peace would bring in its train the danger that German militarism would overrun Europe. Hence republican Russia must continue to wage war upon William II and his army. The Russian people must defend their revolutionary gains until a general pacification had taken place.
Thus it came about that the majority in the soviets was composed of the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. In its capacity as representative of all other councils the workers’ and soldiers’ council in Petrograd concluded with the liberal Duma committee a compromise that paved the way towards the establishment of a provisional government. This government took the form of a liberal middle-class cabinet. Although he did not belong to it as an official representative of the soviets, Kerensky, the well-known member of the Narodniki party, joined it on personal grounds. Ever since March 1917, the executive authority in Russia had found itself in a remarkable situation. The old police force had everywhere been abolished by the mutinous soldiery. All power was in the hands of armed workers and soldiers under the leadership of the soviets. Nevertheless, the former bureaucratic administration continued to exist and found itself confronted with the problem of carrying out the terms of the agreement between the new government and the soviets. The same situation existed at the front as between officers and soldiers’ councils. If the war was to be prosecuted further, then it would be necessary either to restore the authority of the former Tsarist officers as against that of the councils or to create an entirely new body of officers. The work of reconstruction and of creating a new Russia was left to a constituent national assembly in accordance with the ideal striven for by Russian revolutionaries for years past. The dates of the election and assembly of this constituent assembly were left open.
What was the attitude of the Bolsheviks to this early stage of the middle-class revolution in Russia? It soon became evident that Lenin had been mistaken in his belief that it would be possible for him to control his supporters in Russia from his exile in Switzerland across a barrier of contending armies. The fateful changes that Lenin had introduced into the old theory of Bolshevism since 1914 had hardly reached the ears of his followers in Russia; and what had come to their knowledge had been by no means acceptable to them. In these days Kamenev was the most important member of the Bolshevik Party in Russia. In common with the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, Kamenev was sent to Siberia in November 1914, whence he returned to Petrograd after the revolution to edit the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.
Kamenev and his intimate friends still thought in terms of the old Bolshevism that had inspired the party up to the outbreak of the war. He was utterly opposed to the new theories propounded by Lenin. His aim continued to be the continuance of the revolution in Russia from its initial liberal middle-class stage to a democratic dictatorship on the part of the workers and peasants. In other words — to the establishment of a ‘popular’ socialist coalition government whose task would be the realisation of the democratic ideal. Since the end of 1914 Lenin had for his part refused to hear of the establishment of such a coalition government. Kamenev and his friends still remained in favour of a united front of the entire Russian democracy, and they attached little or no importance to the various attitudes adopted towards the war by the individual democratic parties. On the other hand, Lenin wanted to use the question of the war as a means to sow dissension among the Russian democracy and was not afraid of single-handed action on the part of the Bolsheviks for this purpose.
It was not until Lenin succeeded in reaching Russia in April 1917 that he secured effective control over the party and wrested the leadership from Kamenev and his followers after a series of violent debates. These debates and Lenin’s leadership of the party did not, however, make an end to his conflict with the old Bolsheviks. Their polemic continued throughout the entire year 1917 and blazed up again with especial fury at the very moment when the Bolsheviks attained to power. Lenin was on his return to Russia accompanied by Zinoviev. A remarkable change came over their relations the moment Zinoviev once more felt the soil of Russia beneath his feet. This man, who had worked in closest cooperation with Lenin throughout their common exile, who had formulated and elucidated the Bolshevik doctrines in brilliant articles published between 1914 and 1916, now wavered in his allegiance. He deserted Lenin for Kamenev, disapproved of the Bolshevik seizure of power in the state, and conducted a violent opposition to Lenin’s policy in October and November 1917. It will presently be shown what reasons induced the ablest and most experienced brains in the Bolshevik Party to turn against Lenin at the very moment of the party’s triumph.
In March 1917, on receiving in Switzerland the first authentic news of the revolution in Russia, Lenin made a fateful discovery. He became convinced that the system of soldiers’ and workers’ councils — soviets — was the modern expression of the inevitable socialist-democratic revolution. If, however, the history of the Bolshevik movement from 1903 onwards be studied, it at once becomes clear that for fourteen years the soviet system had played no part whatever in its programme. And if one goes still farther back to the arrival of Lenin in St Petersburg (Petrograd) in 1893, it is true to say that for twenty-four years the soviet system had not formed an integral part of the Bolshevik doctrine. But Lenin relied consistently upon the teachings of experience both in theory and practice. He never once hesitated to alter his beliefs to conform with new facts. In this Lenin and Marx were in full agreement. For Marx as for Lenin the revolution was not only the realisation of the revolutionary doctrine but also the expression of its evolutionary development.
The peculiarity in the situation in Russia in March 1917 that immediately attracted the notice of Lenin was the twofold character of governmental authority. On the one hand there was the liberal Provisional Government that was nothing but the customary type of imperialist government and was only differentiated from similar governments in England, France and Germany by the circumstance that it did not control the lesser executive organisations such as the police, etc. On the other hand a new power confronted this middle-class government — the soviet. And in the soviet Lenin recognised the existence in a weak and elementary form of an entirely new type of working-class government which could only be compared historically with the Paris Commune of 1871. His study of the soviet convinced Lenin that everything which Marx had said in his famous essay on the constitutional and political aspects of the Paris Commune applied with equal truth to the Russian soviet in 1917. The typical modern form of the state was a centralised governmental apparatus ruling by force alone. This was the type then prevalent all over Europe and that came into being in England and America during the World War. The imperialistic World War resulted in an enormous increase in the efficiency with which this governmental apparatus worked and in the perfection of its machinery. At the very moment when the apparatus was attaining its maximum efficiency in other countries the Russian people spontaneously began to destroy their own governmental machine. The whole military apparatus of imperialism came to a standstill in Russia as soon as the soldiers ceased to obey their officers and transferred their allegiance to the soldiers’ councils. In a similar manner the civil apparatus of government ceased to operate the moment the armed workmen took the place of the police and only obeyed the orders of their soviets. The essence of the centralised feudal and middle-class state was the separation of the ruling classes from the masses of the nation. The authority of the state was represented on the streets by an armed, uniformed policeman whose behests must be obeyed by the unarmed, civilian population. The manner in which the police discharged their duties in the several states varied greatly, being determined by the differences in the social and legal organisation of the states themselves. Thus the police in Tsarist Russia behaved very differently from those in England or France. Nevertheless, the police forces of all countries possessed a common characteristic: their membership of an administrative organisation standing apart from the masses of the population and incorporating in their eyes the authority of the state.
In a communist state police and nation are identical. The population is armed and responsible to itself alone for the maintenance of law and order. In a similar way the old type of army no longer exists. The armed working classes are themselves the army. Administrative functions in towns and villages are carried out by officials possessing the confidence of the populace. These officials are indistinguishable from the other members of the community in regard to income and manner of life. They are continually under the control of the populace and can be dismissed from their posts at any moment.
A communal system of this type implies the destruction and disappearance of the old form of state. It was the ideal which Marx in common with the anarchists set before him. On every occasion in history when the populace sought to destroy a feudal or centralised authority ruling by force they did so in seeking to replace it by some such communal organisation as, for example, the city communes of the Middle Ages, the Swiss peasant cantons, the early communal type of government in North America, the Paris Commune of 1871 and, finally, the Russian soviet of 1917. As will presently be demonstrated in detail, the educated (so-called) Soviet government that has been in power from 1918 to the present day has nothing in common with this type of government.
Such a ‘communal’ or ‘soviet’ type of government need not necessarily be socialist. For example, it would be easy to imagine a system of communal government by means of people’s councils established in a peasant canton in which the right of private ownership was fully preserved. This extreme form of democracy is, however, according to Marx, the preliminary condition for socialism inasmuch as socialism can only be realised in a world enjoying the highest possible measure of individual freedom.
Lenin was convinced that the unique dual system of government in Russia could not exist for long. If the Provisional Government was successful in asserting its authority, then it would be in a position to acquire control over the whole executive power. The policeman would make his appearance again in the towns, clad perhaps in a new uniform and with some other title, but identical in principle with the Tsarist policeman. The nation would once more be disarmed. The old discipline would be reintroduced into the army and the authority of the soldiers’ councils would be transferred to the officers. If, however, the soviets were successful in the struggle for supreme power in the state, then they would have to be strong enough to dissolve the former ministries and to remove the higher civil servants and officers from their posts. A consequence of their disappearance would be the downfall of the Provisional Government and the field would thus be left open for the soviets alone.
This train of reasoning brought Lenin to his solution of the problem confronting Russia: the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the establishment of the soviets as the sole organs of power. He reasoned somewhat in this fashion: the Russian democracy, as represented in the soviets and in a political sense by the Social Revolutionary and Social-Democrat Parties, desires peace. But the Provisional Government cannot give it peace since it is an imperialistic government of the upper middle class and bent on conquest. Russian democracy demands liberty. Thanks to the soviets a large measure of liberty has been accorded to it. Nevertheless, the Provisional Government is opposed to the liberation of the masses of the nation and desires to reconstruct the old governmental machinery. Further, the Russian peasant cries aloud for land and the working man for bread. The Provisional Government is unable to satisfy these demands since it is pledged to defend the right of private ownership, including the ownership of land, and will never tolerate any dictatorial interference with the distribution of food supplies without which famine cannot be overcome. Since the liberal upper middle class is of necessity unable to fulfil the four great democratic demands for ‘Peace, Liberty, Bread and Land’, any toleration of the Provisional Government by the democratic masses of the nation is ridiculous. Russian democracy, that is, the soviets, must themselves seize the reins of government.
Here Lenin revealed himself faithful to his political traditions in putting forward not socialist but only radical democratic demands. Moreover, his former ideal of a revolutionary democratic coalition government again makes its appearance in a fresh and peculiar guise. For in those days the Bolsheviks formed only a small minority in the soviets and Lenin’s cry of ‘All Power for the Soviets’ meant in the spring and summer of 1917 a coalition government of the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. Did not this contradict Lenin’s own solution of the problem — the impossibility of an alliance with chauvinist democracy — that he had been preaching to his followers since 1914 without intermission?
It is clear that Lenin distinguished between the active members of the Social Revolutionary Party and the masses of the soldiers and peasants who sympathised with the party as a matter of tradition. If the official democratic parties tolerated an upper middle-class government, the opposition among a democratic peasantry hungry for land and a democratic soldiery desirous of peace must grow steadily. If, however, the soviets obtained control over the state, then the government would not be in the hands of the Central Committee of the Social Revolutionary Party but in those of the nation itself, which was revolutionary in a general sense rather than the devotee of any special party tenets.
The revolution in 1905 had already made the nation acquainted with revolutionary soviets. If Lenin’s ideal of ‘All Power for the Soviets’ were now to be realised, the enormous revolutionary force inherent in the nation would be concentrated in the soviets and the task of Bolshevism would become that of adopting the right tactics to secure influence in the soviets. Even in 1917 Lenin did not abandon his principle of a strong party dictatorship and a centralised party organisation. In advocating the assumption of the government by the soviets Lenin was very far from assenting to federalism and the doctrine of the spontaneous will of the masses. Although he had constructed his own party machinery, the soviets were not his work; they were created by the nation itself. All that Lenin desired was to use them in order to destroy Russian imperialism, which in the situation prevailing in Russia in 1917 could only be overthrown by the soviets. In the spring and summer of 1917 Lenin did not give a thought to the problem of how the centralised and autocratic Bolshevik system was to be reconciled with the federalist and anarchist ideal of the soviets after Russian democracy had won a complete victory over its foes.
In the question of a continuance of the war Lenin was in favour of an immediate rupture with the Entente powers in pursuance of the ideas which he had held since 1914. The Provisional Government, on the other hand, under cover of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, wished to continue the struggle at the side of its allies. In April 1917, the German General Staff permitted Lenin to return across Germany to Russia in order to strengthen the opposition to the alliance with the Entente. It was a matter of complete indifference to Lenin with whose help he regained Russian soil. If his plans proved successful, Lenin would be a hundred times more dangerous an enemy to Imperial Germany than the existing government of the Russian republic. Nevertheless he was forced for some months after his return to endure the reproach that he was an agent of the German General Staff.
Immediately after his arrival in Petrograd Lenin laid down his views on the situation in ten important theses published in Pravda. The first thesis showed that, even after the overthrow of the Tsar, the war in which Russia was still a belligerent continued to be an imperialistic war of conquest and that no concession should be made to those who argued that it had become a war of defence. The second thesis demanded that the revolution having now achieved its first stage must continue to advance towards the second. In theses III to V Lenin declared:
No support must be given to the Provisional Government, and their promises, especially those respecting a renunciation of a policy of annexation, must be exposed as the lies that they are... The fact must be recognised that in the majority of workers’ soviets our party is in the minority, indeed at the moment in a numerically very small minority, as compared with the block composed of all lower middle-class and opportunist delegates who are subject to the influence of the middle class and seek to make that influence felt among the proletariat... The masses must be taught to see that the workers’ soviet is the sole possible form for a revolutionary government and that therefore our task must, so long as this government is subject to middle-class influences, be resolute, systematic criticism of its failures and tactics in accordance with the extremely practical demands of the masses. So long as we continue to form the minority we must accompany our criticism by a simultaneous insistence upon the necessity for placing the entire authority of the state in the hands of the workers’ soviets in order that the masses may learn through experience to avoid their mistakes. Not a parliamentary republic — to return to that from the workers’ soviets would be equivalent to making a retrograde step — but an All-Russian Republic of Soviets of Workers, Agricultural Labourers and Peasants from the lowest to the highest!
Lenin indeed had little sympathy with the creation of a constituent national assembly because he looked upon the system of soviets as a better expression of democracy than parliamentarism. Nevertheless he did not pronounce himself in 1917 as in principle opposed to a constituent assembly, and he doubtless thought that this assembly might serve as a sort of superstructure in a country organised on the soviet system.
His sixth thesis demanded the confiscation of the great estates. Theses VII and VIII ran as follows: ‘The incorporation of all banks in a single national bank to be placed under the control of the workers’ soviets. Our immediate task is not the “introduction” of socialism but the acquisition of the control of production and distribution by the workers’ soviets.’ Thus Lenin expressly rejected ‘socialisation’. He was prepared to be content for the time being with a control of capitalism exercised by the working class. He wished to oppose the economic system of imperialism by one organised in accordance with the interests of the masses and which did not necessarily imply the disappearance of the employer.
His ninth thesis demanded an immediate assembly of the Bolshevik Party congress for the purpose of altering both the name and the programme of the party. The alterations which Lenin proposed to introduce into the party’s platform were designed to embody his new beliefs in regard to imperialism and the state. The name of the party was to be changed from ‘Social-Democrat’ to ‘Communist’. This change was of profound symbolical importance inasmuch as Marx and Engels had styled themselves ‘Communists’ in the days of the 1848 revolution. The description ‘Social-Democrat’ had become synonymous with membership of the non-revolutionary Second International. Lenin intended that in future his party should indicate in their new designation that they had returned to the original Marxism of 1848 and that they no longer had anything in common with the Social-Democrats who were prepared to compromise. Lenin’s tenth thesis demanded a reorganisation of the International.
It was only with difficulty that Lenin induced the party to accept this programme in the teeth of the opposition of Bolsheviks of the old type like Kamenev. The latter was of the opinion that a socialist labour party which achieved the supreme power in the state by itself and in opposition to every other group could alone carry out a socialist revolution. Moreover, he looked upon any attempt to achieve an immediate socialist revolution in an agrarian country like Russia as incompatible with the teachings of Bolshevism and highly speculative. For his part Lenin denied resolutely that he wished to introduce socialism into Russia and he maintained that a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants already existed in the soviets and not in some future illusory coalition of the so-called democratic parties. It was for that reason — he contended — that the Bolsheviks should adopt as their slogan, ‘All Power for the Soviets!’.
The fears entertained by Bolsheviks of the old type were not unfounded and it is significant that Trotsky chose this very moment to join the Bolshevik Party. Although his views on the situation were identical with those of Kamenev, Trotsky drew an exactly contrary deduction: if Lenin was preparing for a second revolution in which the Bolsheviks should seize power to the exclusion of all lesser middle-class and peasant democrats, this was indeed the aim of socialism, irrespective of what formulas Lenin might choose to use in his programme. In that case Trotsky was in agreement with Lenin in deed if not in word. Without abandoning his own beliefs in any way, Trotsky felt that he recognised in Lenin’s tactics since March 1917 an approach to his own former beliefs, and he therefore felt that he could join the Bolshevik Party without doing violence to his own conscience. Although Trotsky did not bring many supporters with him into the Bolshevik Party, his membership strengthened the party by the addition of a unique revolutionary personality which was to prove its worth brilliantly in the critical days to come. Moreover, the greater the opposition encountered by Lenin from the side of the Bolshevik Old Guard like Kamenev and Zinoviev, the closer became his friendship with Trotsky, in whose resolute capacity for action he saw his strongest support. In those days Stalin was still a Bolshevik official of quite second-rate capacity. All theoretical differences of opinion between Bolshevism and Trotskyism retreated temporarily into the background to give place to common revolutionary work on the part of Lenin and Trotsky.
The middle-class liberal government came into power in March and by May its resources were exhausted. These months served to reveal the weakness of middle-class liberalism in Russia. Centuries of organic development lay behind the middle class in Central and Western Europe and a thousand ties bound them both to the lower middle class and to the masses. The middle class in Russia was an excrescence grafted artificially on to the social body of the nation. It was alien to the masses. As long as the peasantry and the lower middle class remained inarticulate and obedient, they continued to be loyal subjects of the Tsar. On attaining to class-consciousness they became ‘red’ and revolutionary. In no circumstances were they ever liberal in thought or spirit. Hence middle-class liberalism was a weak minority in the Russian nation in 1917 and only achieved power because the socialists and democrats desired a middle-class government in fulfilment of their theory of a middle-class revolution. As Lenin had prophesied, however, the political truce concluded between the government and the Petrograd Soviet proved useless, since Russian liberalism was incapable of fulfilling the least of the many demands put forward by the masses. The question of peace led to ever sharper protests on the part of the workers and soldiers against the government, and the desire for peace animating the masses was only strengthened by the government’s policy of a prosecution of the war to victory and territorial conquests.
The growing political tension became acute in May and the Soviet was confronted with the problem of taking over the reins of government itself. The liberal phase of the revolution had reached its close. It was now the turn of the democrats. As the decisive party of the peasantry and the soldiers, the Social Revolutionaries abandoned their policy of non-intervention and entered the government. Would their allies in the soviets — the Mensheviks — also accept portfolios?
The traditions animating the Menshevik Party since 1905 forbade their entry into the government. Nevertheless, they resolved in May not to dissolve the alliance (with the Social Revolutionaries) which they had concluded at the beginning of the revolution. In alliance with the Social Revolutionaries the Mensheviks were in the majority in all the soviets and the two groups together incorporated the soviet ideal of Russian democracy. It was their consciousness that they embodied this ideal that induced the Mensheviks to regard it as their duty to enter the government in the altered circumstances so as to further the democratic cause.
The political picture presented by Russia in May 1917 was very different from that which it had presented in 1905. The Mensheviks now formed part of a democratic coalition government and the Bolsheviks were in opposition. Their decision to enter the government proved a fateful one for the Mensheviks and ultimately led to the doom that overtook them. For it was from the outset clear that the balance of political power within the coalition government would give the final voice in affairs to the Social Revolutionaries. The Mensheviks became the prisoners of Narodniki tactics. If they could conquer with them, they could also perish with them. The Bolsheviks followed an all-Russian policy whereas the Mensheviks pursued only a working-class policy that could be productive of little result in the special conditions prevalent in Russia. The Bolsheviks would have been able to maintain themselves in a democratic coalition government as against its other members. The Mensheviks were drawn down into the abyss by the Social Revolutionaries. If the Mensheviks had not entered the government in May, they would not in October have been powerless as a political party. It is significant that the most important member of the Menshevik Party, Martov, did not approve of his party’s entering the coalition government. As leader of a tiny group of Menshevik Internationalists, Martov occupied in 1917 a sort of intermediary position between the government and the Bolsheviks. He and his followers, however, never achieved any real influence over the masses. Since a number of liberals continued to hold office, even after the reconstitution of the government in May, Russia can be said to have been ruled until October 1917 by a coalition government composed of liberals, Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. This is not the place in which to follow all the domestic changes that occurred within the government itself from May to October. Power remained in the hands of the Social Revolutionary members of the cabinet with Kerensky as their leader.
The political bankruptcy of the Narodniki movement became manifest in the course of these six months. The criticism levelled by Russian socialists at the Narodniki in the past was now shown to have been fully justified. Although individuals of heroic proportions were to be found among the Narodniki, the nebulous romanticism of the movement as a whole collapsed when confronted with stark reality. The Narodniki in truth became the prisoners of the imperialistic war. It is undeniable that their attitude towards the problem of peace or war was at least arguable: to work for a general pacification while refusing to conclude a separate peace. It might indeed have been possible to induce the Russian soldier to hold the front against the attack of the German armies on the ground that by so doing he was defending the Russian Revolution against William II. The Kerensky government, however, allowed itself to be persuaded by the Entente and former Tsarist generals into believing that the Russian Revolution must show its strength by taking the offensive. Nevertheless, the decision on the part of the government in July to order the armies to take the offensive again against the Germans and Austrians was a capital psychological error in view of the opinions and morale then prevailing among the armies. Indeed, it was a mistake that in its immensity and its results is only to be compared with that made by the German admirals in October 1918, in ordering the German fleet to put to sea for the purpose of attacking the British fleet. The Kerensky government squandered its moral authority in preparing and carrying out the July offensive, which after a few initial successes ended in complete failure. Its collapse left Russia in ruins.
Kerensky’s domestic policy was as great a failure as was his peace policy. The Social Revolutionaries could not bring themselves to deal promptly with the agrarian problem. Month succeeded to month while the peasant waited vainly to see the landowner deprived of his estate. The working man also waited in vain for measures to be taken against famine and the economic crisis in general. Since, moreover, they had no solution for the pressing problems of the day, the Social Revolutionaries committed a second capital mistake in postponing the assemblage of the all-Russian national assembly. Their fear, indeed, was not that they would suffer defeat at the polls but that their victory would be too great; for a parliamentary election in Russia at that time would have resulted in a decisive majority for the Social Revolutionaries. Supported by a large majority of the nation, the Social Revolutionaries would have been forced to govern Russia by themselves — a possibility from which they recoiled in alarm. Hence, instead of holding an election for a national assembly, the government established all possible forms of conferences, committees, commissions, etc, in which all sorts of representatives of middle-class organisations sat side by side with representatives of the soviets. These artificial creations were utterly lacking in authority. They were, nevertheless, intended to strengthen the hands of the coalition government. Moreover, despite the fact that their weakness was patent, the Social Revolutionaries held firmly to their alliance with the liberals for the purpose of excusing the inefficiency of the government by the necessity for preserving the coalition. Of far greater importance than all these government conferences and commissions was the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, composed of delegates from every workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviet within the frontiers of Russia. This congress elected a permanent executive committee in which the Social Revolutionaries held the absolute majority throughout the spring and summer of 1917.
The renewal of the offensive succeeded in strengthening the authority of the Tsarist officers in the armies at the front. In the name of military discipline revolutionary soldiers were punished and even shot. The officers soon felt themselves sufficiently masters of the situation to enable General Kornilov to attempt a counter-revolutionary coup d'état. His attempt was defeated by the determined opposition of the soldiers’ councils. Disaffection became rife throughout the armies. The soldiers believed that Kornilov’s rebellion had only been possible because of Kerensky’s policy, and their trust in the government was destroyed. The discontent of the peasantry resulted in outbreaks of disorder of ever-increasing violence in the country districts. The peasantry began to identify the Kerensky government with the landowners and to lose their faith in the Social Revolutionaries.
Thus the Kerensky government dug its own grave. Was it inevitable that events should follow the course they did in Russia during the spring and summer months of 1917? After the overthrow of Tsarism, landowners and the upper middle class, a democratic peasant republic was inevitable in Russia — not a socialist labour government. The further progress of the revolution was wholly compatible with a parliamentary constitution and the retention of the right of private ownership. If the Social Revolutionaries had held elections promptly for a national assembly, they would thereby have brought into being a powerful and real instrument of government. It must never be forgotten that the Bolshevik October Revolution was not directed against a legal parliamentary democratic government, but against dictators who had appointed themselves and who had hitherto prevented the assembly of any form of parliament. The motto of the Bolshevik revolution was not ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat! Down with Democracy!’ but was its exact contrary: ‘Long live Democracy! Down with Dictators!’ When Kerensky finally decided to hold elections for a national assembly, it was too late. If the Social Revolutionaries had had a national assembly behind them in the summer of 1917, and had secured from an all-Russian parliament its assent to the expropriation of landed property, they would in all probability have maintained themselves in power. In those circumstances it might even have been possible to maintain the front unbroken during the winter of 1917-18.
The failure of the Social Revolutionaries left the way open for the Bolsheviks to complete the Russian Revolution. Ever since the summer of 1917 it had been clear that the revolution could only be led by either the Narodniki or the Bolsheviks. For neither the liberals nor the Mensheviks nor any other group exercised sufficient influence over the masses to qualify them for leadership. The Bolsheviks rescued the revolution after the collapse of the Social Revolutionaries had endangered its existence. If Lenin had failed in the autumn of 1917, Russia would have become a scene of terrible anarchical chaos and not the theatre of a peaceful democratic development. For the vast Russian nation was now in movement. The peasants no longer tolerated the estate-owners; the soldiers refused obedience to their officers; the workmen wished to abolish capitalists. No power on earth could have restrained them in their blind fury once the traditional authority of the Social Revolutionaries had been destroyed. This frenzied chaos would have ended in the break-up of Russia, in pogroms and in a ‘White’ Terror. The Bolsheviks rescued the Russian nation from this danger and in doing so saved the revolution in Russia, notwithstanding their many experiments and failures. The Russian Revolution was not the work of the Bolsheviks. Their service lies in the recognition by Lenin and Trotsky that at midnight a great anarchical revolt would occur. Five minutes before midnight Lenin and Trotsky gave the order for a Bolshevik rebellion and in doing so created the impression that the tremendous occurrence at midnight was their work. It was in this manner that they won for themselves the authority necessary to enable them to govern Russia.
Through their determined opposition to Kerensky’s July offensive the Bolshevik Party attracted to themselves the attention of the masses. In Petrograd they demonstrated against the government. Kerensky proved himself the stronger by bringing reliable bodies of troops into the capital and denouncing the Bolsheviks as German agents and enemies of the Russian Revolution. The government subjected the party to a ruthless persecution, arrested its officials and suppressed its newspapers. Trotsky was imprisoned and Lenin was forced to lead the life of a conspirator. This persecution produced its martyr. Lenin soon appeared before the masses as the sole oppositional force in Russia simply because all other political parties and groups joined the government in its anti-Bolshevik policy. The more patent the failure of Kerensky, the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, the stronger the conviction in the masses that Lenin was in the right. When Kornilov attempted his counter-revolutionary putsch, Lenin at once called on his supporters to assist the government against the ‘White’ general without regard for past differences. The sailors at Kronstadt — the Bolshevik storm-troops — came to Petrograd to support Kerensky in his fight with Kornilov. The Bolsheviks thus revealed themselves as unconditional defenders of the revolution and regained an appearance of legality. Trotsky was liberated. Lenin, however, was again forced to seek safety in Finland.
The change in public opinion became manifest in September. In Petrograd, Moscow and many provincial towns, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the soviets and the troops went over to them in ever-increasing numbers. The regiments in Petrograd which had enabled Kerensky to occupy the city in July had long since transferred their allegiance to the Bolsheviks. The discontent among the peasants increased from week to week. Nevertheless, an outward appearance of order was still maintained. But Lenin recognised that his hour had struck.
In August and September 1917 Lenin once more defined his theory of communism and Soviet government in a famous pamphlet entitled The State and Revolution. At the same time his mind was preoccupied with the problems arising out of the appalling economic crisis in Russia, where all the evils — famine, failure of transport, diminution in production — inherited by the republic from Tsarism had only grown worse with the passage of time. In September he published a second pamphlet, The Imminent Catastrophe — And How Is It To Be Met?, which contained the economic programme of Bolshevism on the eve of its advent to power. In this pamphlet Lenin regarded the economic situation in Russia from a too optimistic and agitatist standpoint and ascribed the evils from which Russia was suffering in great part to sabotage on the part of employers. While it is undeniable that the radicalisation of the revolution had led to certain acts of sabotage, Lenin nevertheless exaggerated the evil intentions of the capitalists and underestimated the real factors that brought about the economic crisis. It is because he did so that he was able to advance the opinion that resolute control of production on the part of the masses would render capitalistic profiteering impossible and help to restore Russia to normal economic conditions. Lenin went on to advocate five ‘revolutionary-democratic’ measures for overcoming the crisis:
i) The union of all banks in a single organisation and state control of their operations, or nationalisation of the banks.
ii) Nationalisation of cartels and syndicates, that is, the great monopolistic capitalist associations (sugar, naphtha, coal, metal, etc).
iii) The abolition of trade secrecy.
iv) A compulsory syndicalisation, that is, compulsory union in associations, of industrialists, traders and proprietors in general.
v) The compulsory enrolment of the populace in consumers’ societies, or the promotion of such societies and their control by the state.
On the subject of the nationalisation of the banks Lenin wrote:
The blame for the confusion of nationalisation of banks with confiscation of private property lies with the middle-class press whose interest it is to deceive the reader. The capital with which the banks operate, and which is concentrated in the banks, is assured by means of printed and written certificates known as shares, bonds, debentures, bills, receipts, etc, etc; and not a single one of these certificates is altered in any way or lost in the event of the nationalisation of the banks, that is, if all banks are incorporated in a single state bank. If anyone has fifteen roubles to his credit in a bank, he remains the owner of these fifteen roubles after the nationalisation of the banks. If anyone has fifteen million roubles, he will continue to possess them after the nationalisation of the banks either in the form of shares, debentures, bills or some similar paper.
Then Lenin goes on to say:
The gain resulting from a nationalisation of the banks would be very great for the entire nation and not specially for the working man, who has little business with banks. The gain would be great for the peasantry and small traders. It would mean a great saving in labour and, even if the state retained the services of the present number of bank employees, it would mark a great step forward in the universal use of banks, in the increase in the number of their branches, and in the accessibility of their services, etc. The possibility of obtaining credit on easy terms would be enormously increased for the peasants and small businessmen.
Thus Lenin was still far removed from the abolition of private property. The platform of the Bolshevik Party on the eve of the October Revolution contained a proposal for ‘making the acquisition of credit easier for the small businessman'! Such a proposal might have been found in the programme of any middle-class party.
Lenin took the naphtha industry as an illustration in support of his argument for nationalisation of trusts. He said inter alia:
Let us take a glance at the naphtha industry. To an enormous extent it has already been ‘organised in associations’ as a result of the earlier evolution of capitalism. A few naphtha ‘kings’ dispose of millions and hundreds of millions, earn fabulous profits from speculation with a business that on its technical side is already organised like a great city employing hundreds and thousands of workpeople, engineers, etc... In order to achieve positive results it is necessary to substitute democracy for bureaucracy. This must be done in a truly revolutionary manner by declaring war upon the naphtha ‘kings’ and their shareholders, and threatening them with the confiscation of their wealth and imprisonment in the event of their placing hindrances in the way of a nationalisation of the industry, concealing profits and tampering with balance-sheets, interfering with production and failing to take measures to increase production. An appeal must be made to the initiative of the workers and employees; they must be at once assembled in conferences and congresses; and they must be made profit-sharers in the industry on condition that they exercise a careful control over the industry and take measures for increasing its productiveness.
Hence even the naphtha ‘kings’ were not in principle to have their wealth confiscated, but only in cases where they attempted to interfere with production and the workers’ control over the industry.
In support of his argument for the compulsory syndicalisation of industry Lenin pointed to German industry during the World War. He continued:
It must once more be emphasised that syndicalisation does not in the least affect conditions of ownership and does not deprive the proprietor of a single penny of his money. It is necessary to lay great stress upon this fact in consequence of the conduct of the middle-class press, which frightens the smaller traders with the threat that socialists, and in particular Bolsheviks, desire to ‘expropriate’ them. From a scientific standpoint this is a false argument inasmuch as the socialists do not wish to, could not, and will not expropriate the small peasantry even in the event of a purely socialist revolution. Moreover, we are only discussing the immediate and inevitable measures that have already been taken in Western Europe, and that must also be taken at once in Russia by even a partially logical democracy, in order to combat the menacing and inescapable catastrophe.
All the measures proposed by Lenin in the above-mentioned pamphlet are radical and democratic and in the nature of state capitalism. They are not in any way communist. In the dreadful condition of want in which Russia found itself, the masses of the workpeople and employees were to take an active part in the control of production. It was for them to know what went on in their factories and banks and to see that the common interest was not lost sight of or interfered with. The state was to unite the individual industries and banks and compel them to work in accordance with a rational system. A centralised state capitalism of this kind already marked a step on the road to socialism.
In this connexion Lenin gave a very moderate interpretation of socialism: ‘Socialism is nothing else than the next step forward from the stage of monopolistic state capitalism. Or — alternatively: socialism is nothing else than a capitalistic state monopoly worked in the interests of the whole nation and therefore no longer a capitalist monopoly.’ In those days Lenin did not propose the abolition of private ownership in Russia, the expropriation of the middle class, but only a concentration of economic life for the benefit of the nation in accordance with the principles of state capitalism. With such an economic programme Lenin could at that time have found his associates among left-wing middle-class politicians in Central and Western Europe and also in Russia — if his programme had not been bound up with the ideal of an unrestricted political democratisation and with the unconditional rule of the armed masses. It was not because of his proposed control of production and his state capitalism that Lenin was antagonistic to all other political groups in Russia. It was because of his battle-cry: ‘All Power for the Soviet! The Land for the Peasants! An End to the Imperialist War!’
Lenin embarked on the October Revolution with the firm resolve not only to complete the middle-class revolution but to do so in a radical and logical manner. The masses, however, proved themselves the stronger. They abandoned the Bolshevik economic theory and acted under the impulse of the events of the day. In doing so they justified Kamenev’s fears and fulfilled Trotsky’s hopes.