The Bolsheviks in the Urals had long had firm contacts with the Central Committee of the Party. The first organisations of the Party of the proletariat sprang up among the metal-workers and miners of the Urals long before the 1917 Revolution. The inspirer and organiser of the Urals Bolsheviks was J. M. Sverdlov. The iron and steel workers in the Urals were very familiar with “Andrei” and “Mikhailych,” the Party pseudonyms by which Sverdlov was known. He had started work in the Urals in 1906. Short, slim and frail in appearance, he was a tireless worker. The young Bolshevik organiser was rarely to be found at home. He was constantly visiting the factories, speaking at mass meetings or at secret meetings of workers. Fearless and resolute himself, knowing no doubts or hesitation in fulfilling the Party’s decisions, he trained the Urals Bolsheviks in the same spirit. In March 1917 he returned to the Urals from exile and then went to Petrograd to attend the All-Russian April Conference of the Party, where he was elected a member of the Central Committee. Remaining in Petrograd, he continued to maintain close contact with the Urals Bolshevik organisations, frequently sent Party workers there and wrote letters containing instructions and advice.
The Central Committee imposed special tasks on the Urals Bolsheviks, such as to take the initiative in the insurrection should the Bolshevik organisations in Petrograd and Moscow be suppressed, and to ensure the delivery of food supplies to the central districts of the country from Siberia and the Urals. In particular, the Ufa Party organisation was instructed to prepare several trainloads of grain to be dispatched to Petrograd and Moscow on the day after the successful proletarian revolution.
The directions of the Central Committee found the Urals Bolsheviks fully prepared. They sent 22 delegates to the Sixth Congress of the Party, and the decisions of that Congress still further stimulated the fighting spirit of the Urals Party organisations.
In pursuance of the decisions of the Sixth Congress, the Urals Regional Committee issued new instructions to its organisations, including the instruction to put a stop to all tendencies towards unity with the Mensheviks.
On August 5, 1917, a split occurred in the Nizhnaya-Lyalya organisation, and on August 11 a separate Bolshevik organisation was formed in Vyatka. In the same month, independent Bolshevik organisations were also formed in Nizhnaya Salda and in one of the oldest Menshevik strongholds, Nizhnaya Tura. In Chelyabinsk, too, the Bolsheviks completely broke away from the Mensheviks, and finally, a split occurred in Ufa, where the last big united organisation in the Urals had remained.
One of the main tasks confronting the Urals Bolsheviks was to win over the Soviets. Some of the Soviets in the Urals were Bolshevik from the very outset. This was the case at the Nevyansk Works, the Simsk Works, and other plants. The elections held in June 1917 greatly strengthened Bolshevik influence in the Soviets. In the Verkhni Ufalei Soviet, the Bolsheviks won 95 seats out of a total of 103. In the Minyar Soviet they won all the seats. At a District Congress of Soviets held in Alapayevsk the Bolsheviks held 20 seats out of 34. Even in Troitsk, a petty-bourgeois town in the steppes of the Orenburg Gubernia, surrounded by Cossack stanitsas, the elections resulted in the Bolsheviks obtaining predominance in the Soviet.
In August, even in Nizhni Tagil—that Menshevik citadel—the workers began to talk about the necessity of dissolving the Soviet and holding new elections.
“The deputies have held their seats too long,” the workers said about the Mensheviks. “It’s time to infuse fresh blood into the Soviet.”
The Soviet was dissolved and when the new elections took place early in August the Bolsheviks achieved important gains. The former Executive Committee of the Soviet had consisted entirely of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; after the elections it contained five Bolsheviks and one non-party deputy. A Bolshevik was elected chief of the Nizhni-Tagil Militia.
The Bolsheviks were extremely active among the garrison. On August 1 the exemptions from military service granted to former political exiles expired. The Bolshevik Committees instructed all Party members who had been granted exemption to present themselves to the Chief Recruiting Officer in order to join the forces. The latter tried to dissuade the Bolsheviks from their intention to join the army and explained to those who were members of the Soviet that they were exempted automatically. The Bolsheviks refused this offer, however, joined the army, formed military organisations and developed propaganda work in the regiments.
Bolshevik influence also grew in the rural districts. At first agitation among the peasants was conducted in the districts adjacent to the industrial plants. The peasants who came to town listened to Bolshevik speakers who explained to them the Party program and opened their eyes to the demagogy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and bourgeois-nationalists.
Striking testimony of the successes of the Urals Bolsheviks was provided by the Second Regional Congress of Soviets in the Urals held August 17 to 21, 1917, at which 140 delegates, representing over half a million organised workers and soldiers were present. Of these, 77 were Bolsheviks and only 23 were Mensheviks. A section of the “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries voted with the Bolsheviks.
The Congress adopted Bolshevik resolutions on all questions. Of the 11 members of the new Urals Regional Executive Committee that was elected, seven were Bolsheviks. On the previous Executive Committee there had been only one Bolshevik, three Socialist-Revolutionaries and two Mensheviks.
The Congress decided to call a political strike on September 1 to protest against the offensive which had been launched by the counter-revolutionaries. It issued a call to the workers, soldiers and peasants of the Urals which read in part:
“Proletarians of the Urals!
“Our strike will serve as a stern warning to the counter-revolution! . . .
“Our strike will be the first round in the general engagement between the proletariat and capital!”[1]
This call was issued as a special supplement to the regional Bolshevik newspaper Uralskaya Pravda and was printed in 25,000 copies which were distributed in the factories, steel plants, villages and homesteads. The delegates attending the Regional Congress secured bundles of freshly printed copies of this issue and hurried back to their districts, where they visited the factories and military barracks and delivered reports on the Congress.
The only attempts to frustrate the strike were made at the few factories where the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries still predominated. The compromising Soviet in Zlatoust, by a majority vote rejected the resolution of the Regional Congress of Soviets and declared that there was no need to call a political strike. In Perm, the capital of the gubernia, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries also opposed the strike. They were in the majority in the Perm City Soviet as well as in the Area Soviet known as the “Ural Soviet.”
The Urals workers, however, rebuffed these political blacklegs. The Motovilikha Soviet, the largest in the Perm Area, adopted a resolution by the combined votes of the Bolsheviks and “Left” Socialist-Revolutionaries stating that “this Soviet will not submit to the Ural Soviet and will proceed with the strike.” A delegate meeting of the Perm Metal Workers’ Union also voted in favour of strike action.
Where the Soviets wavered the workers themselves carried out the resolution of the Regional Congress.
The strike of September 1 coincided with the Kornilov mutiny. News of Kornilov’s ultimatum was received in Ekaterinburg on August 28. Next day, on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, a conference was held of representatives of Regional, Area and City Soviets and trade union organisations, and of the committees of the Bolshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. This conference adopted a declaration calling for the transfer of power to the Soviets and for a relentless struggle against the Kornilovites. Except for that dealing with the agrarian question, all the points of this declaration were adopted in the form drafted by the Bolsheviks. The conference also set up a special body called the “Executive Committee of Urals Revolutionary Democracy” to combat the counter-revolution. In this connection the Bolsheviks made the reservation that while fighting against Kornilov they would continue to struggle against the Provisional Government.
This committee failed to serve its purpose. The Bolsheviks, therefore, concentrated their efforts on the industrial enterprises and the Soviets. On the proposal of the Bolsheviks, the Executive Committee of the Ekaterinburg Soviet sent special Commissars to the railway, the Telegraph Office and Post Office, and appointed Commissars to supervise the activities of the chief of the garrison and of the Commissar of the Provisional Government so that not a single order or document might be issued without the knowledge of the Soviet. All telephone conversations were put under control.
In view of the Kornilov mutiny the strike of September 1 assumed exceptional political importance. It was to demonstrate the readiness of the Urals workers to resist every attempt at counter-revolution.
The organisation of the demonstration was undertaken by the Regional Executive Committee of Soviets, headed by the Bolsheviks. An additional slogan was added to those which had been already adopted, namely: “Active struggle against the armed counter-revolution.”[2]
On the morning of September 1, work at scores of plants in the Urals ceased, and the workers came out into the streets in groups.
At the Ust-Katav Works, where work ceased at 7 a.m., a mass meeting was held at which about 2,000 workers were present and a Bolshevik resolution was adopted unanimously.
The strike also proceeded in an organised manner in the city of Ekaterinburg, the centre of working-class Urals. The correspondent of the Uralsky Rabochy described the events of the day as follows:
“The city seemed dead. All the factories and workshops were at a standstill. The shops were closed. Many of the government and public offices (the municipal offices, the State Bank, the Treasury Office) were also closed. Quiet reigned in the streets.”[3]
Order in the town was maintained by units of the Red Guard.
Soldiers and peasants took an active part in the demonstrations. In Belebei the men of the local garrison formed the main contingent of the September 1 demonstration and marched in formation through the town carrying flags and singing songs. In the Alapayevsk District, peasants from the surrounding countryside were present at a huge mass meeting held there.
At the most moderate estimate over 100,000 workers of the Urals took part in the strike.
The period of resistance to the Kornilov mutiny and the September strike served as a review of the fighting forces of the Bolshevik organisations. Thousands of armed workers came out into the streets of the factory settlements. New units of the Red Guard were formed at the different plants. In the beginning of August a meeting was held at the Lysva Works, one of the largest enterprises in the Urals, at which 2,000 workers declared in a resolution:
“. . . we are ready to defend the liberties we have won with our last drop of blood and demand that all the workers be armed.”[4]
These words expressed the sentiments of all the workers in the Urals. Most of the resolutions passed by the workers at this time ended with the words: “We demand the immediate organisation of a Red Guard!”
The Urals workers had had considerable experience in organising combat groups dating from 1905. After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution, workers’ combat groups were formed in many of the industrial enterprises. These first units consisted of Bolsheviks who had been working underground, and of non-party workers, mainly those who had taken part in the 1905 Revolution.
Sometimes it was found possible to procure arms in an organised manner. In the first days of the revolution, the workers disarmed the police, the gendarmes and the forest guards. Sometimes arms were confiscated from the managerial staffs of the steel plants. Not only rifles, but machine guns and even three-inch field guns were obtained in this way. Each man procured for himself whatever kind of weapon he could find. Not only firearms but also side arms were obtained, and very often the workers on the night shifts forged for themselves daggers and knives.
In July a Red Guard was formed in Chelyabinsk. Armed workers’ units were formed in all the big industrial plants in the city, primarily on the railways, and at the Stoll Works.[5]
The Red Guard units guarded the industrial plants, railway stations and public buildings, and maintained public order; and in the districts where there were many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks they acted as body-guards for the Bolshevik speakers.
The Red Guard consisted of tried, tested and devoted revolutionary proletarians, most of them members of the Bolshevik Party. Recruits were enrolled with the greatest care and the character of every volunteer was carefully verified by the workers themselves.
A Red Guard unit usually consisted of 20 or 30 men, that is, a small percentage of the workers of a given factory, but the majority of the workers took part in forming these units. At the Motovilikha Works, near Perm, for example, the workers in each shop elected one out of every 25 of their number, the most tried and reliable of them. Considering that the Red Guardsman could not perform his military duties properly if he remained at his job, his workmates released him from the latter duty. The 24 men who elected him deducted a part of their wages and paid him a sum equal to his average earnings.
After the Kornilov mutiny and the unanimous strike of September 1, the Bolsheviks achieved further successes in the struggle against the compromisers. On September 20, the Executive Committee of the Ust-Katav organisation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party announced to its members the voluntary dissolution of the organisation. Having lost all influence among the workers the Socialist-Revolutionaries “committed suicide.” The newspaper Vperyod published a comment on this incident in the form of an obituary signed “Local S.R.” in which the author briefly sketched the history of the Socialist-Revolutionary organisation and ended with the following observation which he suggested as an epitaph for the deceased organisation’s tombstone:
“Such is the result of the unprincipled tactics of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.”[6]
The Zlatoust organisation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party also dwindled to nothing as the result of the growing influence of the Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1917 this organisation had a membership of about 3,000; of these only a mere handful was left. In September the Socialist-Revolutionaries in this town could muster at their general meetings no more than 150 to 200 members.
The extent to which Bolshevik agitation had spread among the masses may be judged from the case of the Byeloretsk Works. This was the biggest and politically the most backward plant in the South Urals; 30,000 workers lived in these backwoods, surrounded by lofty mountains, remote from the railway and from the large centres. But the plant itself was the centre of the Byeloretsk Kamarov Area, and 11 other factories came within the radius of its influence. All the workers in this plant owned plots of land and their own houses. They had only the very faintest idea about political parties and the class struggle. Their cultural level was extremely low and they hardly ever read the newspapers. In August 1917, the tsar’s portrait could still be seen in many of their houses. This morass of political indifference and stagnation served as excellent soil for the growth of Socialist-Revolutionary weeds.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries were in full control of the Soviet, which had nothing in common with the revolution. After the July days it passed a resolution expressing complete confidence in the Provisional Government and called for the ruthless suppression of the Bolsheviks in general, and for the arrest of all the local Bolsheviks in particular. These resolutions were adopted at a meeting held on July 9 and 10, and were advanced by the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Such were the grim conditions under which that veteran Bolshevik P. V. Tochissky was obliged to work at the Byeloretsk Plant. Tochissky had started his revolutionary career as far back as the ‘eighties of the last century, and had been an active participant in the 1905 Revolution in Moscow. He arrived at the Byeloretsk Works from exile in 1916 and formed a nucleus of the Bolshevik organisation. Owing to the machinations of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the threats of the works’ management, however, the group fell to pieces. A brave, staunch and convinced Bolshevik, Comrade Tochissky fought on, regardless of threats and persecution. He was howled down at meetings, dragged from the platform and threatened with assassination, but undaunted he continued to explain the Bolshevik slogans to the workers. By dint of persevering effort, step by step, the Bolsheviks won new positions. They gained control of the Metal Workers’ Union, where they formed a Council of Workers’ Control. By the beginning of October there were 51 Bolsheviks in Byeloretsk. The Socialist-Revolutionaries still had about 2,000 members on their register, but signs of decay were already visible in their organisation. More and more frequently workers belonging to the Socialist-Revolutionary Party came out in opposition to their own committee. The Bolsheviks gained the leadership of the workers.
At the Verkhne-Isetsky Works, in Ekaterinburg, the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary organisation changed their name to Maximalists in an attempt to maintain their influence over the workers. But the workers in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party saw through the trick.
“. . . they have led us by the nose long enough,” they said. “They have been fooling us for seven months, and it’s got to such a pitch that they are ashamed to come before the workers. So now they are calling themselves Maximalist. . . .”[7]
Apart from Ekaterinburg, the only uyezd centre in the Perm Gubernia where the Bolsheviks had a strong organisation was Shadrinsk. This organisation first sprang up in the 139th Reserve Infantry Regiment to which A. A. Zhdanov, then a sub-lieutenant, belonged. As a result of his efforts a small group of Bolshevik soldiers was formed in the middle of 1917.
On August 30 the inaugural meeting of the Bolshevik organisation in the regiment was held at which the Committee of the Shadrinsk Bolshevik organisation was formed, with Zhdanov as Chairman.
From that time onwards the Bolsheviks in the 139th Regiment conducted regular activities among the workers and soldiers. Comrade Zhdanov often visited the Butakov Brothers Textile Mills and soon a number of weavers joined the Bolshevik organisation. Railwaymen were also enrolled. Bolshevik influence gradually spread to the rural districts and Bolshevik committees appeared in a number of volosts in the Shadrinsk Uyezd.
There was a fairly strong Socialist-Revolutionary organisation in Shadrinsk, and even though the local Bolshevik organisation suffered from a shortage of capable propagandists and agitators, under Comrade Zhdanov’s leadership, it quickly succeeded in eliminating the influence of the local Socialist-Revolutionaries among the masses. Soon the Socialist-Revolutionaries ceased to play any role not only in the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Sections of the Soviet, but also in the Peasants’ Section.
In October the Bolshevik organisation in Shadrinsk had a membership of over 100.
The Bolshevik Party’s success in this region was due in no small measure to the assistance it received from the youth. As early as April 1917, a “Youth Organisation” was formed under the supervision of the Ekaterinburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.). At first this organisation consisted mainly of college students, but the Bolsheviks soon changed this. In August a general city meeting of working-class youth was held in Ekaterinburg at which it was decided to form the Third International Socialist Young Workers’ League. The inaugural meeting of this League was held on August 31, at which the rules were adopted and a committee elected. In September, groups of the League began to be formed at the factories.
On July 27 the first general meeting of the Socialist Youth League was held at the Minyar Works; on August 10 a Youth League was formed in Chelyabinsk, and in the middle of August a branch was formed in Perm. The League inculcated Bolshevik ideas among the working-class youth. Young workers sold Bolshevik newspapers, distributed leaflets and acted as messengers. This was modest and unostentatious work, perhaps, but extremely important. The Bolshevik Committees had scarcely any means of communication; they had no local newspapers in which to make their announcements, there were no such things as telephones, and events were moving very rapidly; sometimes it was necessary to meet twice a day. Here the young workers proved very useful in hastening from one plant to another delivering notices of these meetings.
In the factories and surrounding villages the League formed groups of agitators who conducted educational work among the young workers and peasants and collected funds for the Party. By October the League had a membership of 500 in Ekaterinburg, 118 at the Minyar Works, 350 at the Nevyansk Works, 120 at the Verkhnaya Tura Works. In the Socialist League of Working-Class Youth the Bolsheviks had an organised and active auxiliary.
At the beginning of October the Vyatka Gubernia Conference, the Ufa Gubernia Conference and the Perm Area Conference of the Bolshevik Party were held, and on October 10 the Ekaterinburg Gubernia Conference was opened. These conferences revealed that the Ural organisation, which at that time already had an aggregate membership of over 30,000, was ready to carry out the directions of the Central Committee.
The keynote of the Area Congresses of Soviets that were held at this time was that the Congresses were “a review before the battle.”
The Urals delegates who were elected for the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets left for Petrograd knowing that they would have to take part in the armed insurrection in the streets of the capital.
[1] The Working Class of the Urals During the War and the Revolution, Vol. II, 1917 (February-October). Published by the Urals Council of Trade Unions, Sverdlovsk, 1927, p. 331.
[2] Sverdlovsk Regional Archives of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Fund 3, File No. 67, p. 231.
[3] “The Political Strike of September 1,” Uralsky Rabochy, (The Urals Worker), No. 1, November 6, 1917.
[4] Sverdlovsk Regional Archives of the C.P.S.U.(B.), Fund 3, File No. 67, p. 231.
[5] Moiseyev, Reminiscences, Materials of the Secretariat of the Head Editorial Board of The History of the Civil War, Fund of Vol. II, of “H. C. W.”
[6] “The Socialist-Revolutionaries,” Vperyod (Forward), Ufa, No. 151, September 28, 1917.
[7] “At the Verkhne-Isetsky Works,” Uralsky Rabochy, No. 22, October 25, 1917.
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