Having hastily assumed a “republican” guise, the bourgeoisie made every effort to preserve its foundations and supports, and, above all, to retain control of the army and the police. A half dozen tsarist generals or so were removed from the front. Some were transferred to less important posts. The name of the army was changed from the “Imperial Army” to the “Revolutionary Army.”
The police and the gendarmerie were abolished as an organised force everywhere: part were sent to the front, while another part disguised themselves or went into hiding so as to reappear on the scene at a more favourable moment. As it had been presented with power by the revolution, the Provisional Government could not very well restore the old police; but it immediately endeavoured to create a new police force. It instituted a “people’s” militia with elected posts and placed it under the control of the old city Dumas and the Zemstvos. The Members of the “People’s” militia were very carefully selected. For instance, in its early days the Petrograd militia consisted exclusively of students and officers. In this connection, Lenin wrote:
“At the present time, when the landlords and capitalists have come to realise the strength of the revolutionary masses, the most important thing for them is to safeguard the most essential institutions of the old régime, to safeguard the old instruments of oppression: the police, the bureaucracy, the standing army. This is why they try to reduce the ‘civil militia’ to the old type, i.e., to small detachment of armed people, divorced from the masses but in the closest possible contact with the bourgeoisie, and under the command of bourgeois persons.”(1)
It was possible to advance the revolution only by destroying the old apparatus of power, with its police and army. In opposition to the bourgeois manœuvre of creating a “people’s” militia, the Bolshevik Party demanded a proletarian militia, the universal arming of the proletariat. As Lenin wrote in his first letter to Russia on the February Revolution:
“The only guarantee of liberty and of the complete destruction of tsarism lies in arming the proletariat.”(2)
It was not, however, a question of striving to gain control over the newly formed militia, or even of creating an armed force to act as sentinels or guards, or “to maintain order.” The creation of a proletarian militia, as Lenin conceived it, meant far more than this.
One of the chief reasons why the bourgeoisie was able to seize power in the February Revolution was its relatively high state of organisation. During the war the bourgeoisie had found ready-made political organisations in the shape of the Zemstvos, the City Dumas, the State Duma and the War Industry Committees, and it was with these organisations that it met the revolution. The tsarist government savagely suppressed the proletarian organisations, but it did not molest the bourgeois organisations. On the contrary, the tsarist government took pains to encourage the latter so as to be better able to conduct the war and, especially, to combat revolution.
The proletariat had to create its own organisations in haste. And it had not only to create labour organisations of the usual type such as trade unions—at this stage they were not enough—in the transition period from the first stage of the revolution to the second, the proletariat needed an organisation of a new type, an organisation which would help to consolidate its revolutionary power.
The proletarian militia would first of all place arms in the hands of the proletariat and would lead to the universal arming of the toilers. Furthermore, the Bolshevik Party demanded that the ranks of the proletarian militia should be thrown open to women. Millions of working women had been roused to political life for the first time and were taking an active part in public life; they had emancipated themselves from the influence of the bourgeoisie.
With the support of the working people the new militia could take measures to avert the approaching famine, exercise control over the distribution of bread and other products, and secure the uninterrupted working of the mills and factories.
But the proletarian militia could perform its functions only if its members were paid at the expense of the capitalists. This of course meant that the sabotage of the bourgeoisie would have to be smashed and the real control over production entrusted to the workers.
Thus the creation of a proletarian militia inevitably tended to destroy the old apparatus of power—the police and the army—and enlisted into the public service vast numbers of working people who could quite successfully replace the tsarist officials. The proletarian militia became a political school for large numbers of workers. By training the people in the use of arms, the proletarian militia tended to develop into a class army, an army capable of fighting for the power of the Soviets.
This was not only a fight for the creation of proletarian cadres of insurrection. Military and technical preparations for insurrection and the creation of a military force for the purpose of revolution were only a part of this demand. The demand for the organisation of a proletarian militia raised the whole question of power; it showed how large masses of people could be drawn into politics, rescued from the influence of the bourgeoisie and won for the cause of revolution. The proletarian militia directly prepared the masses for the fight for power.
Lenin wrote on the subject of forming a militia as follows:
“Comrades, workers, urge upon the peasants and the rest of the people the necessity of creating a universal militia in place of the police and the old bureaucracy! . . . Under no circumstances be content with a bourgeois militia. Enlist the women into public service on an equal footing with men. Be sure you see to it that the capitalists pay the workers for days devoted to public service in the militia!
“Learn methods of democracy in actual practice, right now, yourselves, from below; rouse the masses to active, immediate, universal participation in government—this and only this will ensure the complete triumph of the revolution and its unswerving, deliberate and systematic advance.”(3)
The Party did not put forward a separate and detailed plan for the creation of a proletarian militia. A task of such profundity and extent could not easily be continued within any narrow scheme. On the contrary, the Party stressed the fact that the proletariat would tackle this task in various ways. As Lenin wrote:
“In some localities of Russia the February-March Revolution has given the proletariat almost full power—in others, the proletariat will begin to build up and strengthen the proletarian militia perhaps by ‘usurpation’; in still others, it will probably work for immediate elections, on the basis of universal, etc., suffrage, to the City Dumas and Zemstvos, in order to turn them into revolutionary centres, etc., until the growth of proletarian organisation, the close relations between the soldiers and workers, the movement among the peasantry, the disillusionment of very many in the competence of the militarist-imperialist government of Guchkov and Milyukov will have brought nearer the hour when that government be replaced by the ‘government’ of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.”(4)
Proletarian militias began to be formed everywhere in the country. In places where large numbers of proletarians were concentrated and where the Bolsheviks had strong organisations, the proletarian militia was formed literally in accordance with the plan outlined by Lenin. For instance, in Kanavino, a suburb of Nizhni Novgorod, where the Bolsheviks were strong, a militia, paid by the capitalists, was instituted in nearly every one of the sixteen factories, together employing a total of 30,000 workers. The bourgeoisie tried to confine the functions of this militia to guarding the factories and maintaining “order.” But as a matter of fact, the Kanavino militia constituted the local authority: the workers controlled production, supervised the distribution of food, regulated conflicts between employers and the workers and so forth. It was in relation to the workers of Kanavino that Lenin wrote:
“This reliable method is being adopted by the working masses themselves. The example of the Nizhni Novgorod workers should be followed throughout Russia.”(5)
This example was followed very closely by the workers of Orekhovo-Zuyevo. A strong Bolshevik nucleus had been formed in Orekhovo-Zuyevo in the very first days of the February Revolution. The workers took over control of the civil militia, in which the bourgeoisie had already managed to enlist high-school students. The Bolshevik organisation set up a staff to direct the military training of the workers. This staff, while guiding the activities of the fighting squads, undertook a topographical study of the city in the event of street warfare and set up an intelligence department to get to know the state of mind of the local counter-revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks of Orekhovo-Zuyevo obtained arms for the proletarian militia “in accordance with local conditions.” The officers of the regiment quartered in the vicinity of the city were sent invitations “for the purpose of creating a bond with the workers.”
“We entertained them well with food and drink,” relates M. I. Petrokov, a worker of Orekhovo-Zuyevo, “and in addition gave them some good cloth, and thus gained possession of their rifles to the number of 300, and of 61,000 service cartridges. This was all brought to us that very same night.”(6)
Just as in Kanavino, the militia in Orekhovo-Zuyevo constituted the actual power of the proletariat in the district. The representatives of the Provisional Government could not carry out a single measure without the sanction and consent of the militia, and with the aid of the latter the workers of Orekhovo-Zuyevo achieved quite important successes in their economic struggle.
The militia of Orekhovo-Zuyevo took an active part in the October fighting; they fought the Junkers in Moscow no worse than the Moscow workers themselves did.
Armed squads of Bolshevik Party members were formed in other districts. They gradually began to enlist workers not belonging to the Bolshevik Party. In Ekaterinoslav a secret squad, armed with revolvers, had been formed even before the February Revolution. The purpose of the squad was to serve “only secret mass meetings and secret meetings in houses in order to prevent discovery and to scare off spies.”(7)
After the revolution this squad rapidly began to reinforce its ranks from members of the Bolshevik organisation. At the end of April it was retitled and called a Red Guard, but those who desired to join it had to furnish a recommendation from a Bolshevik Party organisation.
In the Urals, a proletarian militia arose in the process of combating counter-revolutionary acts.
For instance, Cossacks guarding a wine-cellar in Troitsk on May Day, broke the locks and seals and got at the vodka. They got drunk and began to wreck the wine-cellar. Suspicious individuals began to prowl around the drunken Cossacks, inciting them to “beat up” the Jews. The Bolsheviks summoned an extraordinary meeting at which it was decided to mobilise all members of the party and to form squads for the defence and protection of the citizens of Troitsk.
An appeal was also issued to workers not belonging to the Party. Squads led by members of the Bolshevik Party were immediately formed in the factories. Arms were obtained from the staff of the 131st Reserve Infantry Regiment. Two weeks after order had been restored part of the weapons were returned, but part concealed in the factories. The workers’ squads in Troitsk continued to combat the counter-revolutionary acts of the local bourgeoisie, kulak and officers; they guarded meetings and released Bolsheviks from prison. After the October Revolution the Troitsk Bolsheviks tested their arms fighting the bands of Ataman Dutov.
But in most parts of Russia the proletarian militia was formed as detachments of the Red Guard. The Red Guard was the most typical form of the proletarian militia.
[1] Lenin, “On the Proletarian Militia,” The Revolution of 1917, (Eng. ed.), Vol. XX, Part I.
[2] Lenin, “Letters from Afar,” Selected Works, (Eng. ed.), Vol. VI, p. 10.
[3] Lenin, “On the Proletarian Militia,” The Revolution of 1917, Collected Works, (Eng. ed.), Vol. XX, Part I.
[4] Lenin, “Letters from Afar” The Revolution of 1917, Collected Works, (Eng. ed.), Vol. XX, Part I.
[5] Lenin, “On the Proletarian Militia,” The Revolution of 1917, Collected Works, (Eng. ed.), Vol. XX, Part I.
[6] M. I. Petrokov, “Reminiscences,” MS. Records of the History of the Civil War, No. 311.
[7] The Fight for the Soviets in Ekaterinoslav, Dniepropetrovsk, 1927, p. 176.
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