The Workshop Of The Revolution. I. N. Steinberg 1953
The October Revolution began in February of the year 1917. There is either logical nor historical reason to divide the living stream of the Russian Revolution. The February period, which saw the establishment of the bourgeois democratic order, and the October period, which was the inception of the Soviet regime, are both parts of the same revolution. For the impulses of the social upheaval which characterized October were inherent in the first days of the earlier overturn in February. The eight months of painful gestation that passed between February and October fulfilled one historic function: to help mature the revolutionary social ideas and energies needed for the real task of that era. Those months were also used by the opposing forces in an attempt to mitigate and hold off the gigantic storm that swept across Russia, a storm which could not be checked. Every day and every act of the February period-consciously or unconsciously-prepared the path to October.
How did the panorama of the Russian Revolution unfold on the day after the fall of the czarist regime? On that unforgettable morning of February 27, 1917[1], an almost unified people stepped on to the stage of liberated Russia, a people stirred by the passionate, age-old demand: to rid itself of the czarist yoke. But the magnificent illusion of a nationally unified people could not long maintain itself with such a purely negative purpose as its foundation. In the new power vacuum, divergent political camps soon appeared-classes, parties and individuals, each with their special ambitions, hopes and demands.
Symbolic of this turmoil was the strange scene enacted during the very first days of the February Revolution in the Catherine Hall of the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. Here, before thousands of workers and soldiers of Petrograd who were just tasting the intoxicating draught of liberation, Paul Miliukov, leader of the Liberal or Kadet Party [2], called for the restoration of the monarchy. He suggested the crowning of Grand Duke Alexei, minor son of yesterday’s Czar Nicholas. This demand broke, as with an iron bar, the national unity of the people which had triumphed but the day before. No wonder that Miliukov’s voice was drowned in the uproar of his agitated audience.
Miliukov did not see, or else tried to ignore, that hard by, in the same Tauride Palace, the future governing body of the country had already been constituted-the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. While Miliukov and the classes behind him thought in terms of the Russian nation, the recently formed workers’ councils, or Soviets, spoke in the name of the people. This distinction became particularly acute when viewed against the background of the World War, then in its third year. By its very violence the war had uncovered all the social conflicts in the country and helped raise the first class barricades of the revolution.
Two clear, fundamentally different programs of revolution soon crystallized. For the Russian bourgeoisie, the revolution was, first of all, a means for the more efficient conduct of the war. They saw not so much a liberated people as a liberated Army. They hoped that now, in full partnership with the Allied Governments, it would be possible to rouse the Army to victories on the battlefields and to the fulfillment of Russia’s international ambitions. In place of the venal, stupid bureaucrats, they wished to substitute an honest liberal government which would help the people forget the defeats of the czarist generals and raise Russia to glorious parity with the great European powers. The war was to be continued, therefore, not only to satisfy the imperialist appetites of the Russian bourgeoisie, but also to strengthen their position in the revolution itself at the expense of the people.
But not on the war issue alone did the bourgeoisie divorce itself from the majority of the people. The cleavage extended along the entire length of the political and economic front. Russia’s industrial and merchant class, with a decadent landed gentry in tow, dreamt of establishing a strong, either monarchical or bourgeois-constitutional, order. Within this framework the masses of the population were to enjoy the right of representation and consultation: the right to a parliament. At the same time the bourgeoisie reserved the right to conduct affairs of state: the control of state power.
A hundred years of European experience had convinced the middle class of the usefulness of such division of power-the people voting from time to time for a representative house, and the state machinery working behind the scenes. To this political ideal the bourgeois classes had added their specific economic plans. A European-type capitalist order with its subtle forms of exploitation was to be founded in the new Russia. Capital had readied itself, in advance, to make use of the huge internal market; of the foreign spheres of influence (China, Persia, Turkey, the Balkans), of international economic enterprises. And again, guided by the example of other European countries, the Russian bourgeoisie was preparing to base its economic power on such social legislation as would appease the proletariat with concessions and make it a loyal participant in its fortunes. A state with a multimillion population of small landowners, with vast opportunities for enrichment; with a proletariat, lulled and pacified; with a powerless peasant parliament and a noisy international policy-such was the goal of the Russian bourgeoisie. Its ideological spokesman was the Kadet party, which combined the latest findings of European experience with the frank self-interests of the landowner, the industrialist and the banker.
To what source did the bourgeoisie look for the realization of their ideals? To a Constituent Assembly, which was to formulate the basic laws of the country? This question must be answered clearly: the Russian bourgeoisie never felt any true enthusiasm for such a body. They feared it as the point of massive concentration for the revolutionary masses. That is why the first demand after the Czar’s fall, to convene a Constituent Assembly, which was the long-cherished hope of the Russian people, was proclaimed not by the Provisional Government, set up by the bourgeoisie, but by the Pctrograd Soviet.
The bourgeois plans did not tally with the ideals of the people, particularly with the city workers and the peasants. It would be wrong to say that the hopes of the people had assumed definite forms immediately upon the outbreak of revolution. But the general cast of their demands, shaped by the peasantry was represented at the onset of the revolution by the Social-Revolutionary Party which later split into right and left wings. The moderate camp embraced the Mensheviks and Right Social-Revolutionaries while the radical camp included the Bolsheviks and the Left Social-Revolutionaries. It must be stated that only the two radical parties had, from the very beginning of the revolution, openly identified themselves with the aspirations of the working masses. The demand for immediate peace’ on an international scale, for a quick inauguration of the agrarian revolution, for labor control over production, for transfer of political power to the working people-all these impelled the two left-wing groups.
True, the other socialist parties-the Mensheviks and right- wing Social Revolutionaries-also recognized the fundamental difference between the bourgeois and workers’ programs of the revolution; they too perceived the class-inspired background of the Kadet plans. They believed, however, that the necessary conditions were not yet in evidence to realize the program of the people. They conceived it impossible to end the war without the co-operation of the Allied powers. They thought it utopian to transfer political power to the working classes since, in their view, the capitalist order in Russia was inevitable. Their interpretation of the revolution as only a democratic bourgeois succession to czarism demanded, of course, a corresponding strategy-the strategy of class compromise and political compliance. This strategy put the moderate two parties (Mensheviks and Right Social-Revolutionaries) halfway between the bourgeois and the working-class programs, gave their activities an air of vacillation and, in fact, fortified the position of the bourgeois camp.
What was the socialist attitude toward the Constituent Assembly? Both the moderate and the radical groups had demanded
the calling of the Constituent Assembly, and this demand sharply separated them from the bourgeois elements. The question only was how far, in the future, each would use its strength to assure the convocation of this supreme revolutionary institution.
This, in general outline, was the disposition of the basic classes, parties and programs at the outbreak of the revolution. Three main groups functioned in its arena, groups which we will later encounter at every step. First, there was the bourgeoisie and the Kadet Party; second, the middle layers of the proletariat and peasantry represented by the vacillating Mensheviks and the Right Social-Revolutionaries; and third, the same proletariat and peasantry represented by the Bolsheviks and the Left Social- Revolutionaries. The struggles of these forces put their stamp on the entire revolutionary period from February to October, 1917.
Immediately after the fall of czarism, the Provisional Government formally took over state power. This government was composed of the best representatives of the bourgeois parties under the leadership of the liberal Count Lvov. Among them, figuring as Minister of Justice, was Alexander Kerensky, a leader of the right-wing Social-Revolutionary Party and a member also of the Petrograd Soviet, who considered himself in the government as “the eye of democracy.” The Government at once sought to bolster its position in the country by appointing Commissars in all provinces, these being mostly members of the landed gentry. It looked as though it would be able to concentrate in its hands full state power.
But it was mistaken. Actual power rested already in the Soviets: in the Petrograd Soviet and in innumerable local councils which had been formed spontaneously in the entire country. True, all socialist parties at that time held that they must not appropriate state power; that they should only strengthen the Soviets and thence exert control over the actions of the Provisional Government. This formula was perhaps logical, but politically it solved no problems whatever. For in every conflict between these rival seats of power-the Provisional Government and the Soviets-the decisive voice belonged to the Soviets. In this manner a state of “dual rule” developed. The anomaly of this situation revealed itself sharply in the question of peace.
On March 14, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet issued its famous Peace Manifesto to the workers of the warring countries. The triumphant Russian people called for a general democratic peace, “without annexations, without contributions, with the right of all nations to self-determination.” The people had expected that this program would automatically become the program of their Government. But this was not to be. At the head of the “Revolutionary” Foreign Office was Professor Miliukov, leader of the Kadet Party. Miliukov had no thought of repudiating the “historic tasks of Russia,” and he steered directly to the first collision with the Soviets. On April 21, he sent his formulation of war aims to the governments of the Entente. This document, a masterpiece of diplomatic double talk, renewed in fact the imperialist goals of all the Russias.
But it soon became clear that in a revolutionary era even foreign policy is made not in the offices of ministers and ambassadors, but “in the streets.” Against this unexpected dashing of the people’s hopes, opposition arose not so much from among the Soviet leaders, as from among the working masses themselves. Workers filed into the streets, units of the military marched angrily on the Maria Palace where the Government was in session. Then it was that the Soviet leaders took the situation in hand and formulated the protest of the masses. Miliukov had to resign on May 2, 1917, as Foreign Minister.
That day heralded the next stage of the revolution. It resulted in a new alignment of forces, creating the semblance of a Coalition Government. It is true that the leaders of the Soviets, the moderate socialists, wished to avoid the new responsibilities that went with their entry into the Government. They would have preferred to let the bourgeois parties lead the bourgeois revolution, while they themselves stood guard with the whip of control in their hands. But this idyll had become impossible. The people, believing that their demands could be better realized not by external pressure but by direct participation in a Coalition Government, now clamored more and more for representation.
But why coalition with the bourgeois parties only? Why not a coalition of the socialist parties without the bourgeoisie?
The answer is that the masses were still under the ideological influence of the moderate socialists for whom class compromise was a major principle in politics. According to the decision of the Petrograd Soviet, the Government, still headed by the same Count Lvov, was supplemented by the most important leaders of the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries: Irakly Tseretelli, Vladimir Skobelev, Alexander Kerensky, Victor Chernov.
The first coalition lasted two months-from early May to the beginning of July. During that period the Russian people throughout the country created their own organizations. The workers established trade unions in unprecedented numbers; the soldiers won support throughout the Army for the soldiers’ committees, or Soviets; in the democratic municipal elections, socialist candidates were elected everywhere with large majorities. The bourgeois parties could simply not maintain their influence in the cities. This vigorous process of organization took hold also of all the non-Russian nationalities which had long yearned for liberty from the czarist “prison of nations.”
But most impressive was the emergence of the organization of the working peasantry, Russia’s greatest human reserve. Thousands of Soviets of peasant deputies were formed and in May these representatives gathered in Petrograd for their first All- Russian Congress. Never before had the world seen a congress so impressive in power and scope. A hundred million peasants, tilling one sixth of the land area of the globe, had their representatives convoked under one roof. Unanimously these men adopted a program of land socialization, the basis for the Russian agrarian revolution. They augmented the system of the Soviets which were to embrace all villages. The peasant Soviets which had already, as a matter of course, taken over the entire rural administration of the country, paved the way quite naturally for the Soviet Republic of the future.
But the two months of May and June had evidenced not only the great power of the people, but also, in reverse, the attenuation, almost the annihilation, of the role of the bourgeoisie. Neither among the working people, nor in the Army (apart from the higher officers), nor in the cities were the Kadets able to muster any serious support. To the same extent as liberals of all types had shone in, and influenced, the political arena of the pre-revolutionary period, to that extent they were now driven into the shadows by revolutionary democracy. This fact must be kept in mind during the following events.
There was no peace in the country. Heavy clouds threatened the new Coalition Government. Much as people had confidence in their socialist ministers, they still kept close watch over them closer even than over the former purely bourgeois government. Greater demands, after all, are made on “one’s own.”
The work of the Coalition Government was not easy. Trying to elude internal obstacles, it satisfied nobody. The agrarian question loomed on the agenda with understandable urgency. Although the Peasant Congress, which had just closed in Petro- grad, had decided to await the Constituent Assembly for final solution to peasant problems, it had demanded the immediate adoption of two preliminary measures: first, the suspension of all transactions in land which might reduce the area available for free distribution after a decision of the Constituent Assembly; and second, the transference of land wholly to the administration of the local Land Committees. These two measures would, legally and factually, prepare the groundwork for the agrarian revolution and would in the meantime help feed the country. The Social-Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, Victor Chernov, was to see to it that these two demands were promulgated by the Government as laws.
And here the whole difficulty in the situation became apparent. The Kadets in the Government absolutely refused to vote for such laws. They were particularly opposed to the second measure; to transfer the land, if only temporarily, into the hands of the Land Committees seemed to them “anarchic” and rapacious. They demanded that no property be touched “until the Constituent Assembly.” And when the first measure was accepted after all, no less a personage than the Premier, Count Lvov, resigned from the Government.
The same stubbornness was evident in questions concerning the workers. As mentioned before, Factory Committees had been established in large manufacturing plants. These committees demanded a voice in the production process, and the industrialists began to give battle against these tendencies. The Ministry of Labor, headed by the moderate Menshevik Skobelev, was in permanent conflict with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, where the capitalist interests were concentrated. Because of a law that was to have confirmed labor control over production, the truly liberal Minister of Trade, Alexander Konovalov, resigned.
Yet the division and weakness of the Coalition Government was most evident in the fundamental problem confronting the revolution-peace. A new liberal Independent, Michael Tereschenko, became Foreign Minister. But he, too, continued the disastrous policy of Miliukov, which itself had been no different from the policy of Sozonov, the Czar’s Foreign Minister. Despite the fact that all of Europe was sparked by the currents that flowed from Russia, despite the monstrous sacrifices in human lives Russia had already made in three years of war, the Coalition Government was unable to bring the Allied governments to a consideration of the peace problem. The moderate socialist ministers, too, held blindly to Russia’s obligations to the Allies. Thus their will was doubly paralyzed: by coalition within and alliance abroad.
But this was not all. In the name of unity with the Allies, new offensive operations of the Russian Army were set in preparation. Kerensky became the new War Minister and staked his entire popularity with the people on this military goal. Traveling up and down the front, he tried to hypnotise the soldiers with socialist promises of “land and freedom”; he presented them with Red flags and demanded a new military offensive against Germany and Austria.
A wave of agitation shook the hearts of these soldiers-peasants and workers torn from their homes. They sensed that the renewal of war would saddle the revolution with an intolerable burden; would restore the whole psychology of war: blood-thirst, shallow patriotism, contempt for foreign nations. As in a flash, the masses recognized the unfitness of the Government. The coalition had not resolved the “dual role” of the first period; it had merely imported it into the Government itself. Two social camps sat at one table, observing each other, fearing each other and systematically obstructing each other. This was not a coalition for action, but a coalition of mistakes.
What, in the meantime, was happening in the soviets, particularly the Petrograd Soviet, whose power rested on the support of the city’s garrison and workers? The role and prestige of the Soviets had fallen greatly since their leaders-Tseretelli, Skobelev, Chernov-had gone from the Tauride Palace (headquarters of the Soviets) to the Maria Palace, seat of the Government. They had thus carried the effective power that had been the Soviets’ into the Coalition Government. But, as in April, the Government was to learn that the views of the people were not always synonymous with the views of the leaders.
At the beginning of June, the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets took place in Petrograd, which Congress elected a Soviet Central Executive Committee for the whole of Russia. The great majority of the delegates belonged to the moderates: Mensheviks and Right Social-Revolutionaries. The radical socialists, while a minority, voiced their criticism sharply, and the moderate socialist ministers were now in the position of having to defend themselves against attacks from the Left. While the moderates argued in all sincerity that one could not expect a solution of all problems in the fourth month of the revolution, the radicals no less sincerely protested that the revolution was already four months old, and it was now even more powerless than at the start.
What then was the alternative to class compromise in a coalition? The radicals had their answer ready. They suggested the establishment of a “united government” composed of socialists of all parties. Only for such a government would the country and world have appropriate respect. And then the following incident occurred. One of the socialist ministers challenged the congress to indicate whether there was anyone among them ready to take power.
Lenin stood up and declared that he and his party, the Bolsheviks, were so ready. The Congress laughed, and men sneered at the speaker from all sides. But the contours of the next revolutionary stage thus came into view.
When Lenin had arrived in Petrograd at the beginning of the revolution, his party was almost unknown among the masses of the people. More than that, in April, 1917, during a conference of Bolshevik leaders, Lenin had proposed his revolutionary theses: to fight against the bourgeoisie, and to assume power through the Soviets. Only two of the Bolshevik delegates voted in favor of these theses: Lenin himself and Madame Alexandra Kollontai (later a member of the Soviet Government and the first woman ambassador in the world). Now in June, two months later, the political situation in the country had changed to such an extent that Lenin was able publicly to declare his readiness to accept power. From a splinter group within the Russian labor movement, the Bolshevik Party had begun to expand into a force. The whole trend of governmental policy, blind to the demands of the people, prepared the ground for the rise of the Bolshevik Party, which literally grew on the blunders and the dogmatic stubbornness of the moderates.
With the political situation so confused, where meanwhile was the dream of the Constituent Assembly? All governmental reforms had been pronounced contingent on its convocation, but the socialist ministers could not even give the Soviet Congress an idea of the possible date of its meeting. Finally the left Social-Democrat (not Bolshevik), Julius Martov, made a declaration that “there must be an end to the further postponement of the Constituent Assembly; the Congress must affirm that the Constituent Assembly is no idle fancy telling of some faraway moment in the revolution. It is the next political act of the Provisional Government.”
But the Government reacted to all these demands with a shattering blow. On June 18, the Russian Army opened its offensive against the German and Austrian forces. The moderates forced through a resolution demanding that the Soviet Congress make an “Appeal to the Army,” to justify the military offensive. “The Russian Revolution,” said the document, “has long ago appealed to the nations of the world in its efforts for a general peace. As long as our appeal has not been accepted by the European peoples, the war continues not through any fault of ours.” And the appeal came to this conclusion: “The military offensive will prove our organized strength, and this will add weight to the voice of Revolutionary Russia in the world, and will bring closer the end of the war.” These dialectics resulted in deep moral and psychological disturbances within the Army. Soldiers considered themselves betrayed by their democratic and socialist leaders. They felt that renewal of war postponed their hopes for social justice, distribution of land and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.
It seemed, however, that the bourgeoisie could be well satisfied. The Congress of the Soviets had proved innocuous, and the military operations continued according to plan. Nevertheless, this was the moment when the Kadets launched their political offensive. They, too, were dissatisfied with the existing Coalition Government, and they demanded the establishment of a new united government, but of course not a socialist one. They used one of the many complicated political issues to resign from the government that had been composed with such difficulties. [3] Again the representatives of the Soviets remained in midair. What comes next? And again the unseen, but constantly watchful force of the country-the people itself-stepped into the breach.
During the days of July 3, 4 and 5, 1917, tens of thousands of workers, Petrograd soldiers and Kronstadt sailors poured into the streets to demand a radical change. The Bolshevik Party, still weak at that time, shrewdly attached itself to this mass movement and furnished it with a slogan: “All Power to the Soviets!” The movement was tragic, from beginning to end. It was reminiscent, to a great extent, of the famous march of the Petrograd workers to the Czar under the leadership of the priest Gapon on January 9, 1905. On that occasion the naive masses had gone to Czar Nicholas II with demands that could not be granted because their realization would have destroyed the very foundations of the monarchy. Now, in July, 1917, the workers demanded of the Soviets that which-with their present leadership-the Soviets could not have fulfilled. The workers of the largest Petrograd plant, the Putilov factory, wrote in their call to the citizens:
“We marched in those days with the pure hearts of loyal sons of the Revolution. We marched not against the Soviets, but to support them. That is why our flags bore the words: ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ “
“All Power to the Soviets” in those days meant the establishment of a unified socialist government, under the control of the Soviet Central Executive Committee. But the majority of the Committee were still the moderate socialists who, in principle, rejected the notion of taking power in their hands. Despite the dissolution of the Government by action of the Kadets, they continued to cling to the idea of coalition. The workers were driven back into their factories, the soldiers into their barracks, and in the Tauride Palace the politicians settled down to compose another shadow government.
The military catastrophe at the front broke on July 7. The mass retreat of the Russian Army began at Tarnopol, in Galicia. Nothing was left of the offensive. A feeling of fright and confusion took hold of the leaders of the country. To explain the defeat, which was military and political both, they accused the Bolsheviks of undermining the Army. This was only a half-truth. The fact was that all socialist parties, without exception, had long undermined the military force and will of the Russian divisions. The reorganization of the Army which had been started by the bourgeois War Minister Gutchkoff at the beginning of the revolution and the impassioned agitation for peace- together brought on a situation in which the soldiers rejected the whole business of war.
Add to these reasons, the technical and military weakness of the entire High Command. Boris Savinkov himself, Kerensky’s closest collaborator, declared at that time that “the tragic position at the front is created not only by Bolshevik agitation. Guilty are also sections of the commanding officers who behaved with criminal cowardice and fostered counter-revolutionary tendencies.”
Faced with this twofold crisis-at the front and in the Government -the Central Soviet Executive still failed to read the signs of the times. Submitting to the panic around them, they began a struggle against the radical elements on the Left. They branded the Bolshevik leaders “German agents,” and began to persecute them. Privileges gained by the soldiers since the revolution were now being denied them. More than that: the death penalty was reintroduced at the front for soldiers who refused to enter battle. Even in this fundamental issue-the death penalty-the spirit of the old regime triumphed again; for restoring the death penalty, the revolution tumbled from its moral height and delivered to the military clique a weapon that would later be used against the revolution itself. A deep abyss opened in those days between the Mensheviks and Right Social-Revolutionaries on one side, and the Bolsheviks and Left Social-Revolutionaries on the other. And it was no more than natural that the two latter groups were thrown together, despite their basic ideological differences. Together with the Bolsheviks Trotsky and Lunacharsky, the Left Social-Revolutionaries Proshyan and Ustinov were arrested. In the capital and in the provinces the revolutionary slogans of the recent, tragic days of the July riots were imprinted in the minds of large sections of the population.
The Soviet Central Executive Committee remained loyal to its political line. On July 10, it appointed a new Government in coalition with the bourgeoisie. It christened it with the sentimental, alarmist name, “Government To Save the Revolution,” and simultaneously endowed it with dictatorial powers. Its Premier was Kerensky, right-wing Social-Revolutionary, the man who was supposed to plug up all the loopholes of the revolution. But by that time Kerensky had lost hold of the ties of confidence which once had bound him to the people.
The most influential members of the soviets entered the Government; but on the bourgeois side the ministers were no longer members of the Kadet Party; they were independents. In this way the Kadets left themselves free to prepare their new move in the political game. The main speaker for and exponent of this rootless coalition was the Social-Democrat (Menshevik) Tseretelli. As Minister of the Interior he dispatched a circular to the whole country designed to redouble the power of the Government Commissars against the active local soviets. He ordered these Commissars to block the “illegal distribution of landed properties,” the “appropriation, ploughing and sowing of other people’s lands.” He thus sustained the policy of his predecessor, Prince Lvov. Every circular of this kind was like a match thrown into the powder keg of the revolution.
General Brussilov, who had warned Kerensky against the military offensive, was removed from his post as Commander in Chief. In his place the new Government appointed General Kornilov, an officer whose political reputation was widely mistrusted-it was he who had demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty. He got what he wanted and, as the “strong man,” he became the white hope of the frightened Government and the higher military circles. A reactionary wind was now blowing in all fields of state life. As to the question of the peace, the Government told the Allied countries that it remained “inexorably determined to continue the war to the full triumph of the ideals proclaimed by the Russian Revolution.” There was not even a mention of peace. Russia’s rulers had again issued a promissory note for the continuation of the war.
This was, then, the time for the counter-revolution to gather its forces. The economic crisis in the country, the bitter conflicts between the classes, the rift among the socialists which had become apparent in the days of July gave courage to those hidden elements who were preparing a military dictatorship. The Bolsheviks were declared traitors to the country; but they were not alone. Accusing fingers were pointed even at the Coalition Minister and Right Social-Revolutionary Victor Chernov. Had not Chernov, under the guise of legality, prepared the expropriation of landowners’ properties? Accused of “pacifist” ideas, he was forced to resign from the Government. And the Constituent Assembly was postponed again to some indeterminate time in the future.
If there had ever been a moment when the entire situation cried out for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, this was the moment. All formal considerations should have been brushed aside to make its meeting possible at once. But the irony of history willed it that the future sovereign body of the revolution be drowned in so-called preparatory paper work. On March 25, a commission to formulate the law concerning the Constituent Assembly had been appointed. Its first meeting did not take place until May 25. And only on July 26 did the commission publish its instructions for the elections. According to these instructions, elections were to take place only after local administrations had compiled the lists of the electorate. Yet these local administrations did not even exist at the end of July; and it became obvious that, working at such sluggish pace, the Constituent Assembly could not possibly see the light of day by September 17-the date promised for its convocation. And soon November 12 was substituted for September 17. In this manner the moderates themselves continued to debase the import and power of the awaited “master of the Russian land.”
But the quasi-dictatorial Government felt insecure. It tried desperately to induce the Kadet Party to re-enter the Government. Since the Kadets presented unacceptable conditions, the Government fell apart again. And again there was panic. During a dramatic meeting of all moderate leaders in the Winter Palace, they found no better solution than to narrow the dictatorship down to one man. Alexander Kerensky, as Premier, was to appoint all ministers himself and be completely independent of parties and Soviets. This was how Kerensky became the “national leader of the country.” But it was no longer the same Kerensky who, during the first months, had seemed to be the single embodiment of the revolutionary populace. Kerensky divorced himself entirely from the Soviets. Had he gained instead some social support from other sections of the people?
For a new, great danger appeared suddenly from another side. General Kornilov, Commander in Chief of the Russian Army, strongly opposed Kerensky. The two camps-Government and Army-had for some time existed in a state of severe tension. To escape this dilemma, Kerensky called a solemn State Conference in Moscow in August, during which he intended both to intimidate his opponents and gain support from the “living forces in the country.”
This Conference became the arena in which the opposing forces appeared openly before the country. Social and military reactionaries appeared with their heads high; and Kornilov demanded “iron discipline” and the death penalty throughout the land. The speakers of the Kadet Party dressed up these military demands in dignified political terms. The moderate leaders of the soviets, however, kept to a defensive position; and their principal speaker, Tseretelli, appealed with all the ardor of his oratory to the good sense of the bourgeoisie and tried to win them over to a “genuine coalition.” Most impressive was a scene during which Bublikov, a leading member of Russian industry, stepped up to Tseretelli and shook his hand. The entire hall applauded this symbolic act of the coalition.
But at the very moment, workers in Moscow were involved in a general strike. Under the influence of the radical groups, they declared their opposition to the dangerous turn the revolution had taken. The State Conference finished with a heap of resolutions-but action came from elsewhere.
On August 22, 1917, the German armies broke through the front at Riga. Military catastrophe was approaching Petrograd itself. Army headquarters spread reports describing the battles as panicky stampedes of the entire Russian Army. The reports were false, politically slanted. The Army Commissars-who represented the Government-reported, on the contrary, that the vast majority of the Army was fighting heroically, that “entire divisions” perished in combat. And everybody asked: Why did the defeat come at Riga? Was there not some evil plan on the part of the military reactionaries?
The answer came on August 26, when General Kornilov and his headquarters began an open rebellion against the Government. This must be remembered: Kornilov and his supporters were the first to give the signal for the Russian civil war. The rebels demanded that all state power be handed over to Kornilov. And in his manifesto, Kornilov had the incredible audacity to declare: “The Provisional Government, standing as it does under the pressure of the Bolsheviks in the soviets, works in full agreement with the German General Staff.” At the same time, he began, at the head of the army, his march on Petrograd.
But the counter-revolution had miscalculated. The entire country-from the capital to the last forgotten village-rose as one man. As on a signal, workers, soldiers, railway men, postal officials armed themselves, occupied all danger points, cut off the military headquarters from the rest of the country and forced them to complete capitulation. Tremendous strength was thus uncovered in the soviets when Kerensky, in despair, turned to them for help. But the masses who defeated the rebellions, clearly conscious of the political issues involved, were not out to save Kerensky’s Government, but their own independence which, they now realized, dwelled in the power of the Soviets. The road to the October Revolution, from that moment, lay open.
But the political game was not over yet, and once more Kerensky was entrusted with the task of forming a new-the fifth-Government. Under pressure of the Soviet Central Executive, he was forced to call another all-Russian conference- the “Democratic Conference.” This time the conference differed from the August gathering. The bourgeois parties and organizations were no longer represented; the moderate socialist groups were the leaders. It had become clear from the outset that no Kerensky regime of whatever composition could any longer speak in the name of the revolution. And it was not surprising that, during the two “Kornilov months,” August and September, the political and moral prestige of the radical elements had risen tremendously among the people. They could not have known that among these elements the Bolsheviks aspired only to a party dictatorship disguised as a Soviet Government.
It is not necessary to report in detail the heated debates at this almost revolutionary Democratic Conference. The fervent speeches for, and against, the coalition were no longer timely. Representing the Bolsheviks, Leo Kamenev said, “Don’t think you can make friends of the foes of the working class. Miracles do not occur in our history.” Representing the Left Social- Revolutionaries, who now acted as an independent party, Maria Spiridonova stated, “The coalition has brought us Kornilov. It gave the peasantry nothing. Everything we have achieved during this period we have achieved by battling against the coalition.” Only the Menshevik Tseretelli, even at this late moment, spoke in his old manner, “Even yet we must see if there is not some common path with the bourgeois democrats. If there is, we must go together.”
These words evaporated like smoke in the fiery revolutionary atmosphere. The Conference bore no results. It thought up a new institution with the strange name of “Pre-Parliament,” to’ which Kerensky was supposed to be responsible. And again he was to appoint his own cabinet of ministers and formulate his own program. Such decisions were possible only because the organized masses of the people had lost all interest in the political farce. Several weeks later the Pre-Parliament vanished from the stage of the revolution.
While in one part of Petrograd the shadowboxing of the Pre- Parliament was being staged, the pulse of feverish activity beat in the Soviet, meeting in another part of the city. Its leadership had, during these last months, passed into very different hands. Bolsheviks and Left Social-Revolutionaries now headed it. Trotsky was elected chairman. Under the influence of the new leaders, the Petrograd Soviet declared in a resolution its sharp opposition to the Government. “We will give no support to a government of bourgeois power and counter-revolutionary violence. The Congress of the Soviets itself will establish the true revolutionary government.” This resolution mirrored the mood of an ever-growing number of popular organizations throughout the country. All hopes now turned to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets which was to meet on October 20, 1917. Consciously or not, in fear or in joy, the people expected the Congress to bring about a clear-cut change in the entire situation.
And what of the Constituent Assembly?
Its eventual convocation kept receding further into the back ground of the people’s mind. It had not made its appearance during all those months when the people had looked to its convening with confidence and longing. It had not appeared in time to clear away the ever-growing obstacles in the path of the revolution, to ease the sufferings of the many. As a result, new forces rose from the depths of the people to take their place in the revolutionary arena.
Sparks blew from every corner of the country. At the regional Congress of Soviets in the area around Petrograd and Finland, the delegates representing the Baltic Fleet stated that the fleet would not obey the orders of the Government as long as it was not vested in the hands of the Soviets. The Kronstadt Soviet made the same declaration. And the Moscow Soviet took to direct social action. Relying on its power, it ordered the industrialists to accede to all demands of the workers, who were then on strike. In such manner these foes of the revolution and their vacillating friends helped to “bolshevize” the country.
The decisive date of October 20, 1917, was approaching. The moderates who saw the political ground vanishing from under their feet, campaigned against the right of the Soviet Congress to adopt any fundamental decisions. In their view the soviets were “played out” as political organs.
The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were preparing for the Congress actually to transfer power to the soviets. For them the Congress was to be the open road to rebellion.
The Left Social-Revolutionaries did not think it advisable to precipitate such a rebellion. In their opinion it would be sufficient for the Congress to maintain the positions of the people and lead the revolution to the Constituent Assembly. But they felt that, if the masses were to rebel, they would not stand against them.
On October 12, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet appointed a Military-Revolutionary Committee. Ten days later this Committee stationed its Commissars at all military points in the city and declared that only their orders were to be obeyed. This was, in fact, the beginning of the revolt for, with this step, it had brushed aside the existing government. On October 24 Kerensky appeared before the Pre-Parliament and demanded ratification of a government decree to arrest the Military- Revolutionary Committee. The amazing fact was that even this institution, which Kerensky himself had created, did not grant him these powers. Instead, the Pre-Parliament carried the following resolution:
“The success of the agitation in favor of an uprising is due not merely to the objective conditions of war and general disorganization, but also to the delay in carrying out measures which the country most urgently needs. Therefore it is necessary to pass immediately a decree transferring the land to the Land Committees and to take a decisive stand . . . proposing to the Allies that they announce the conditions of peace and begin peace negotiations.”
The Government thus remained without any support in the country. This situation was graphically expressed in a little- known incident which occurred on the night of October 24. It was told six years later by Fyodor Dan, a prominent leader of the Menshevik Party.
“With the adoption of the resolution it was a question of what to do next. I conceived the idea of going immediately to the session of the Provisional government and demanding that the following declaration of the government be printed at once and copies be posted throughout the city during the night: 1) that the Allied Powers have been requested to make an offer to all belligerents to stop military operations and begin negotiations for a general peace; 2) that orders have been sent by telegraph authorizing the transfer of land to the local Land Committees; 3) that the date for the convening of the Constituent Assembly has been advanced. Abram Gotz [who was as important in the party of the Right Social-Revolutionaries as Dan was among the Mensheviks] accepted my suggestion.
“The Provisional government was in session. At our request the officer on duty called Kerensky. We informed him of the text of the resolution and told him that the decisions on the question of peace, land and the Constituent Assembly should be passed at once and be made known to the population. We insisted that this must be done that very night in order that every soldier and every worker might know of the decisions of the government by next morning.
“Our conversation did not last very long. Kerensky said finally with disdain that the government did not need any of our advice, that this was not the time to talk but to act.” [4]
This last-minute appeal to Kerensky by the moderates themselves, on the very issues which the radicals had fought for all along, proved that the political lease of February had indeed expired. The next day, October 25, 1917, revolt flared in Petrograd. It was the October Revolution.