Thus the demonstration of July 3-5 was smashed and the Bolshevik Party driven underground.
It would appear that the movement had ended in defeat. But as a matter of fact it was in a way a victory for the revolution in its transition from a bourgeois revolution to a Socialist revolution. The bourgeoisie rather overrated its success: the superficial and easily-discernible changes prevented it from observing the profound process of redistribution of class forces that was going on beneath the surface. When the tsarist autocracy smashed the peaceful demonstration of January 9, 1905, it put an end not to the workers’ movement but to the workers’ faith in the Tsar. In the same way, by suppressing the July demonstration, the bourgeoisie destroyed not the workers’ revolution but the workers’ confidence, not so much in the bourgeoisie itself—that had been destroyed long ago—but in the petty-bourgeois leaders.
Among the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators there were quite a number of rank-and-file Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Like many thousands of non-party workers who had trusted the petty-bourgeois bloc, they now clearly realised the utter vileness of the latter’s treachery. The July days drove a wedge between the rank-and-file and the leaders of the compromising parties: while the leaders passed over to the camp of the bourgeoisie, the rank-and-file swung sharply towards the proletariat.
The ranks of the Bolsheviks began to swell rapidly. In three weeks the Petrograd membership of the Bolshevik Party increased by 2,500. The growth of the Party and of its influence among the workers can also be judged from the results of the elections to various organisations in the mills and factories. The elections of stewards to the sick benefit societies in the New Lessner factory and the Old Lessner factory resulted as follows: of a hundred stewards elected, fifteen were Socialist-Revolutionaries, five Mensheviks and eighty Bolsheviks. Until then less than half the stewards had been Bolsheviks. At the Ericson factory, of sixty stewards elected, seven were Mensheviks, fourteen Socialist-Revolutionaries and thirty-nine Bolsheviks. At the Treugolnik factory, of a hundred stewards elected about seventy were Bolsheviks, whereas previously the majority of the stewards had been Socialist-Revolutionaries.
The results were similar in the elections to the Soviets. At the Franco-Russian factory three Bolshevik deputies were elected in place of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. A Bolshevik was elected in place of a compromiser at the Langensiepen factory, and so on.
The workers were deserting the bankrupt parties and going over to the Bolsheviks. If they did not always join the Party—frequently because of the savage persecution—they nevertheless threw off the influence of the petty-bourgeois leaders.
Everywhere the result was the same: after the first days of unbridled repression, the workers as it were withdrew into themselves, and, having thought the question over, gradually went over to the Bolshevik camp.
“We made a report on the Petrograd events,” a delegate from Grozny related at the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, “and what was the result? Not a single word from the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks: they were crushed. After this the campaign of slander ceased and, what is more, Socialist-Revolutionaries began to join our organisation.”(1)
“The Socialist-Revolutionaries enjoy great influence,” a delegate from the Donbas reported. “But after the events of July 3-5 a flow of workers from the Socialist-Revolutionary organisations into ours became noticeable. . . . Prominent Socialist-Revolutionaries joined our organisation and declared that the ruling classes have betrayed the interests of the workers.”(2)
Further evidence of the disintegration of the petty-bourgeois parties is provided by the growth of the opposition within their ranks. Among the Mensheviks there was a growth in the strength of the Left Wing, whose leader, Martov, even proposed during the July days that the power should be transferred to the Soviets; the Right Wing of the Mensheviks virtually broke away and allied itself with the Den newspaper, which was edited by the well-known liquidator, Potresov. The Left current among the Socialist-Revolutionaries gained strength. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party was being rent to pieces: the Rights abused the leaders, while the Lefts accused the Rights of treachery.
The July movement gave rise to what was frequently observed in the subsequent history of the Party: sensing the danger which threatened its party, the proletariat rallied still more closely around the Bolsheviks. Very soon after the July events the first “Party Week” was held, during which workers flocked to the Party in large numbers.
The July demonstration played an important part in one other respect. It supplied the workers and peasants with an answer to the fundamental question of the revolution—in whose hands was the power? The broad mass of the working population now clearly perceived to their cost that the power had passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Lenin expressed the following opinion of the July days:
“The movement of July 3-4 was the last attempt by way of demonstrations to induce the Soviets to take power. From that moment on, the Soviets, i.e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in control of them, virtually handed over power to the counter-revolution, represented by the Cadets and supported by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. A peaceful development of the Russian revolution has now become impossible, and the question as put by history is: either a complete victory for the counter-revolution, or a new revolution.”(3)
The working out of new tactics for the new stage of the revolution was a task undertaken by the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party.
[1] The Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks), August 1917, Moscow, 1934, p. 91.
[2] Ibid., pp. 51-52.
[3] Lenin, “An Answer,” Collected Works, (Russ. ed.), Vol. XXI, p. 45.
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