From the very first days of the revolution the proletariat of Petrograd diligently set about arming itself. The workers compelled the petty-bourgeois leaders of the Soviet to sanction from above what had already been accomplished from below. On February 28 the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Executive Committee of the Soviet adopted the following decision:
“The workers in the mills and factories shall organise a militia consisting of 100 men for every 1,000 workers.”(1)
But, just as in the case of Order No. 1, as soon as it became clear that the bourgeoisie had withstood the first onslaught, the Mensheviks endeavoured to nullify this concession.
The Executive Committee first of all forbade the issue of arms to the workers, and then, at its meeting on March 7, declared in favour of merging the factory militia with the general civil militia. The Executive Committee recommended the workers:
“(1) To merge the whole organisation with the city militia. (2) At the same time to preserve their independent organisation and to set up their elected militia committees; to accept the white armlet and number of the city militia and the credentials issued by the factory militia to the white armlet of the city militia, and retain their own numbers and their own credentials.”(2)
This “recommendation” is, incidentally, characteristic of a method the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks usually resorted to. Fearing to repel the workers by open and downright support of the bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeois leaders endeavoured to adorn their proposals with “democratic” labels: the workers’ militia was to be dissolved, but, as a consolation, the worker militiamen were to be allowed to retain insignia.
The masses realised that the proletarian militia would have to be formed despite the wishes of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and in opposition to them.
On March 3 the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party instructed two of its organisers to submit a project for the formation of cadres of a proletarian militia.
This decision, in fact, was the origin of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. The Military Commission, as we have already seen, was active chiefly among the soldiers, while the formation of a proletarian militia was energetically and ably undertaken by the districts organisations. Small groups of factory militia sprang up in a number of industrial establishments and gradually attracted more and more workers. Everywhere the proletariat was arming. Weapons which had been buried before the revolution were dug up; arms were obtained from the soldiers, or purchased wherever possible. Many weapons had been prudently secured in the early days of the revolution. We learn from an order issued by General Kornilov, Commander of the Petrograd Military Area, in which he demanded that the population should immediately surrender all weapons, that over 40,000 rifles and 30,000 revolvers had been taken from the arsenal in the early days of the revolution.
The order issued by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Executive Committee of the Soviet to merge the factory militia with the city militia was not obeyed by the workers, nor did they surrender their arms. Groups of armed workers formed in the factories and in connection with certain of the trade unions continued to exist and to grow under various names, such as “Party squads,” “workers’ militia of the district Soviets,” “workers’ squads,” “fighting squads,” etc.
Much effort was spent by the workers in disputes over the payment of these armed squads. The workers demanded pay for the time spent on militia duty at the rate of their average wages. The employers, conscious of the support both of the government authorities and of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, refused to pay. The Petrograd City Duma agreed to pay the members of the workers’ squads only if they dissolved and joined the ordinary militia.
The members of the proletarian militia were not paid, the issue of arms to them was forbidden, and when the campaign against the Bolsheviks became intense after Lenin’s return to Russia, steps were taken to disarm them. Many were arrested. The proletarian militia was the first organisation against which the Provisional Government launched its terror—so seriously did the bourgeoisie regard the formation of the Red Guard. But in spite of all this, the proletarian militia, under one name or another, continued to grow in the mills and factories.
Resolutions began to appear in the Press demanding the arming of the proletariat.
Thus, on April 15, the workers of the Old Parviainen factory sent a resolution to the Izvestia of the Soviet of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies insisting on the dissolution of the Provisional Government, which was only hindering the revolution, and the transfer of power to the Soviets, and demanded:
“A Red Guard shall be organised and the whole people armed.”
The movement assumed such wide proportions that a uniform system of organisation became a necessity.
In the middle of April the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik Party, in response to the anti-Bolshevik campaign and the counter-revolutionary acts of the bourgeoisie, discussed the question of creating special squads of Party members to safeguard the Party’s freedom of action.
On April 28 the Soviet of the Vyborg District, which by that time consisted almost entirely of Bolsheviks, unanimously resolved to transform the militia into a “Workers’ Guard,” and on the next day “Draft Regulations of the Workers’ Guard” were published in Pravda. The draft regulations contained the following points:
“Aims and objects: 1. The aims and objects of the Workers’ Guard are:
(a) To defend the gains of the working class by force of arms.
(b) To safeguard the life, safety and property of all citizens without distinction of sex, age or nationality.
“Membership: 2. Membership in the Workers’ Guard is open to working men or working women belonging to a Socialist party or to a trade union, who can become Guards on the recommendation of or election by a general meeting of their factory or workshop.”(3)
The Executive Committee of the Soviet, which had always been opposed to independent workers’ squads, swung still more to the Right under the influence of the April events. When publishing the draft regulations on April 28, the Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies prefaced them by a warning editorial in which the Menshevik writer expressed the fear that
“the Red Guard, in the form in which it is projected, represents a direct menace to the unity of the revolutionary forces,”(4)
and was only calculated to drive a wedge between the workers’ squads and the revolutionary army. The fact that the regulations of the Red Guard were published even after this panicky editorial shows that the demands of the workers were more than the Mensheviks could withstand.
On April 28 a conference of representatives of the workers of various factories were held. It was attended by 156 delegates from eighty-two Petrograd factories and twenty-six delegates from party organisations. The Menshevik delegates demanded that the workers’ squads should be placed under the control of the Soviet. A representative from the Executive Committee of the Soviet declared that
“the unfavourable attitude of the Executive Committee to the idea of a Red Guard is now being embodied in a definite resolution of the Bureau of the Executive Committee which will be published to-morrow.”(5)
The meeting was outraged by this announcement and elected a delegation to negotiate with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Executive Committee. The following day the delegation visited Chkheidze at the offices of the Executive Committee. The response of the Mensheviks to this visit was a brief article in No. 54 of the Izvestia entitled “Red Guard or Militia?” in which it was again urged that the workers’ squads should merge with the “organisation of the militia”(6) and terminate their independent existence.
Resisting the compromising Soviet, the Bolsheviks focused their activities on the separate factories where detachments of the Red Guard had already been created. The Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks set about strengthening its leadership of the factory committees in the capital. This was essential for the successful arming of the proletariat, because the work of organising armed squads was chiefly in the hands of the factory committees. The Bolshevisation of the factory committees directly resulted in increasing the influence of the Party in the trade unions and in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
The disputes between the employers and the workers over the payment of the militia were a reflection of the stubborn efforts made by the workers to create a Red Guard. The Petrograd Chief of Militia issued orders “to detain and disarm all militiamen whose armlets bear the letters ‘P.M.’ (People’s Militia) instead of ‘C.M.’ (Civil Militia).”(7) In reply the Bolsheviks focused intention on the question of a people’s militia at the election meetings to the district Dumas. The Council of the Society of Mill-Owners continued to receive complaints from capitalists in which it was declared that the demands of the workers’ militia were being supported by the factory committees. The workers formed a united front against the employers.
An incident that occurred at the leather factory of I. V. Ossipov & Co. was characteristic. The owners of the factory complained to the Council of the Mill-Owners of the “over-militant attitude of the militiamen” and of the fact that they were being supported by the factory committee and the workers of the factory as a body—again over the question of paying the militia. The Council of the Society recommended the owners to appeal to the Ministry of the Interior. Confident of their strength, on April 16 the owners informed the worker-militiamen that they would no longer pay them as from March 10. The workers’ militia arrested the factory management and summoned a general meeting of the workers. The director of the factory was invited to attend. He refused to come, and was brought to the meeting by force. The workers of the factory decided that every one of the demands of the militiamen was justified and should be satisfied and resolved
“categorically to demand that the factory management should pay the comrades of the militia according to their wage categories as from March 10, otherwise the meeting has decided energetically to support our comrades of the militia with every means in our power.”(8)
Under pressure of the workers, many employers—such as Siemens-Schuckert, the Army and Navy Instrument Factory, the leather factory of A. Paramonov—agreed to concede.
Protests addressed by the capitalists to the Ministry of the Interior show how the workers, led by the Bolsheviks, put the idea of the universal arming of the proletariat into effect. In a statement addressed to the Ministry of the Interior, the All-Russian Society of Leather Manufacturers declared:
“A new type of militia has now been organised in the big leather factories. The workers elect one militiaman for every 100 workers, and the group thus formed exercises in shooting and other duties of militiamen for one month; they are then replaced by a fresh group, the idea being that in time all the workers in the factories shall have had training as militiamen. [Under such circumstances] the purpose of the worker-militiamen is rather obscure, and at any rate is in no wise necessitated by the requirements of production.”(9)
The proletarian militia passed through very much the same stages of development in the provinces as in Petrograd. The February Revolution furnished the proletariat with arms. The workers’ squads at first functioned as a militia, protecting the cities from banditry and drunken riots. Every where they met with the resistance of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
On March 2 a people’s militia was formed in Moscow with functions similar to the one in Petrograd, viz., “to maintain peace and order.” From the very first days of the revolution the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries protested against the arming of the workers and even threatened to arrest all who were found in possession of arms. Nevertheless, part of the arms found their way to the factories, and the fighting squads when formed underwent military training. The distribution of weapons was uneven and casual. The greater the energy and initiative displayed, the better was the arming effected. For example, the workers of the Michelson factory learnt that arms evacuated by the Warsaw police were stored in the warehouses of the Siberian Bank at the Ryazan-Urals Railway Station. It was decided to gain possession of them. The workers of this same factory manufactured bombs at night, and at the time of the October Revolution were able to arm their own Red Guard, neighbouring factories and the soldiers of the Dvina Regiment. By April they had already organised a detachment of the Red Guard consisting of over 400 men.
In April, according to Peche, an organiser of the Red Guard in Moscow, there were workers’ squads in the Michelson factory, the Motor factory, the telephone equipment factory, the Provodnik factory and others. But as a rule there was a shortage of weapons. For example, the Red Guard formed in June at the Postavshchik factory in Moscow, consisting of eighty men, was obliged to use sticks during rifle drill owing to a shortage of rifles.
From the very outset the Moscow Bolsheviks devoted considerable attention to the proletarian militia. At a City Conference of the Moscow Bolshevik held on April 3-4 a resolution was adopted dealing with the current situation and the tasks of the proletariat, one of the points of which ran as follows:
“To organise an armed people’s militia recruited under the strict control of the proletarian and peasant organisations.”(10)
And ten days later, on April 14, the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party, in furtherance of this point, adopted the following propositions by an almost unanimous vote:
“1. Comrades should join the Red Guard.
“2. It should be proposed to the Committee of Public Organisations through the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies that preference be given, if not to members of the Party, at least to workers.
“3. Factory squads should be formed for the protection of the factories. The factory-owners would thus have to procure arms.
“4. Party squads or rifle clubs should be organised and all measures taken to secure arms.”(11)
The efforts of the Moscow Bolsheviks to form a proletarian militia were a model of flexible tactics. Workers’ detachments were being organised in the factories. The bourgeoisie determined to outwit the Bolsheviks and gain control of the movement. To this end the Committee of Public Organisations, which was under the sway of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, undertook to form a Red Guard.
The Bolsheviks first of all made it incumbent on the members of the Bolshevik Party nuclei in the factories to join these detachments. Meanwhile, as long as the control of the Red Guard was in the hands of the Mensheviks, the Party recommended that Party squads should be formed and armed. These tactics would make it possible to gain control of the organisation from within. The subsequent development of the political struggle justified these tactics. The Moscow Bolsheviks managed to retain control of the detachments.
A meeting of the Moscow Committee, the Moscow District Committee and the Regional Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee held on April 28, to which active members of the organisation were invited, adopted a resolution on policy towards the Provisional Government which contained the following point:
“A workers’ Red Guard shall immediately be organised without predetermining the forms it may assume.”(12)
Thus wherever the Bolsheviks led the proletariat—in the capital and in the provinces, in the Urals and in the Donbas, in the Ukraine and in the Caucasus—detachments of the Red Guard were formed, even though as a result of a severe and obstinate struggle. Persecuted by the government, and in face of the resistance of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks succeeded in guiding the initiative of the masses and in carrying on widespread work for the organisation of a proletarian militia. In striving for the formation of a proletarian militia, the Bolsheviks utilised every class demand of the workers and exposed every attempt at compromise on the part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Whether it was a question of housing or of the food shortage, of taking steps to avert famine or of commandeering surplus grain, the Bolsheviks were able to show that the measures of the government and the promises of the Mensheviks could not be carried out until the working population took its share in the government of the country and until the police and the army were replaced by a proletarian militia organised for defence and offence. This policy helped to instil in the minds of the proletariat the idea that a class civil war, a proletarian revolution, was inevitable.
In May, when re-elections to the district Dumas were in full swing and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were carrying on vociferous agitation, promising the proletariat food and houses, Lenin wrote an article entitled “Forgetting the Main Thing,” in which he reviewed the struggle for the creation of a proletarian militia and said:
“. . . Once we forget the crude and cruel conditions of capitalist domination, all such platforms, all such lists of high-sounding reforms are nothing but empty words which in practice turn out to be either the most ‘pious wishes,’ or simple deception of the masses by ten-a-penny bourgeois politicians.”(13)
As long as there existed a police force or an alternative militia, separated from and directed against the people, no serious and radical reforms in the interest of the working population were possible.
“A people’s militia, instead of a police force and a standing army, is a condition for successful municipal reforms in the interests of the toilers.”(14)
“A people’s militia,” Lenin wrote, “would be an education in democracy for the real masses.
“A people’s militia would mean that the poor are governed not only through the rich, not through their police, but by the people themselves, predominantly by the poor.
“A people’s militia would mean that control (over factories, dwellings, the distribution of products, etc.) is capable of becoming something more than a paper project.
“A people’s militia would mean that bread would be distributed without bread lines and without any privileges for the rich.”(15)
The Bolsheviks were as a result very successful in forming a proletarian militia: by July the Party had its armed detachments in every industrial centre, made up of advanced proletarians who were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the great, revolutionary cause of the Party.
[1] “Decision of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.” Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, Supplement to No. 1, February 28, 1917.
[2] “The City Militia.” Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, No. 10, March 9, 1917.
[3] “The Workers’ Guard,” Pravda, No. 44, April 29, 1917.
[4] “The Red Guard,” Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, No. 52, April 28, 1917.
[5] “Conference on the Red Guard,” Novaya Zhizn, No. 10, April 29, 1917.
[6] “Red Guard or Militia?” Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies, No. 54, April 30, 1917.
[7] “A Democratic Militia or a Bureaucratic Police?” Pravda, No. 64, May 24, 1917.
[8] V. U. Hessen, “The Red Guard and the Petrograd Industrialists in 1917,” Krasnaya letopis, 1928, No. 3 (27), p. 64.
[9] Central Archives of the October Revolution, Records—406, “Chief Department of Militia,” Section III, File No. 134, folio 43.
[10] “Resolution on the Current Situation and the Tasks of the Proletariat adopted at the Moscow City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P., April 3-4, 1917,” Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 25, April 6, 1917.
[11] Archives of the Moscow Committee of the C.P.S.U., “Minutes of the Meeting of the Moscow Committee of the Bolsheviks on April 14, 1917.”
[12] October in Moscow. Materials and Documents, Moscow, 1932, p. 19.
[13] Lenin, “Forgetting the Main Thing,” The Revolution of 1917, (Eng. ed.), Vol. II.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
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