User:Denis Cavanagh/Russian Revolution of 1917

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The 1917 Russian Revolutions took place in February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar) and in October 1917 (November in the Gregorian calendar). The first revolution removed the Tsar Nicholas II from power and was replaced with a provisional government which aimed to bring about a democratic republic along the lines of western Liberal traditions. The second revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik party which overthrew the provisional government and replaced it with a socialist system, took Russia out of the First World War, and eventually led to the creation of the USSR in 1923.

Origins

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian Empire was one of Europe’s great powers. It stretched from Poland in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, from the arctic north to Turkey and Afghanistan in the south. The hub of the Empire lay in Europe however, with a population of 92 million in 1897 (The total population of the Empire being 126 million) Despite its size and population, it was commonly regarded as backward in comparison with the other great European powers, such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany. It was late to emerge from feudalism (serfdom was abandoned in 1861) and to begin the process of industrialization (which also was slow and small). Its political development was also backwards. No legitimate political parties existed until 1905, there was no national popularly-elected parliament, and the autocracy survived with absolute power. Its towns and cities had little tradition in local politics or organization, and the nobility had rarely gained concessions from the throne.

Beginning in the 1880s, Russia saw a steady increase in economic growth. This growth was the result of new industrialization policies, foreign investment, modernization of the banking sector, and a development of native entrepreneurial activity. The peasantry, which made up a vast majority of the Russian population, did not see a marked improvement in their economic situation, but there was no steady deterioration either.

Life was very traditional in the villages. The peasants still held their land in communal tenure, divided the village fields into narrow strips reminiscent of feudal Europe that were tilled separately by various peasant households. Modern farming techniques were largely unknown; the wooden plough for example was still in widespread use. More often than not, agriculture was rarely above the subsistence level. The emancipation had however changed peasant life, but the pace of change was extremely slow. Debts caused by the emancipation were scheduled to last for forty-nine years, or until 1910 (Russia canceled them a few years early) and the village was responsible for the debts of all members. These debts ensured the peasants were once again tied to their debtmaster for the duration of the debt. The idea was to ensure that a large number of landless peasants wouldn't flock to the cities rapidly, causing a danger to public order.

The urban working class was closely tied to the peasantry. The number of permanent industrial workers (around three million in 1914) was smaller than the number of peasants who left the villages for non-agricultural work each year. Many workers in the cities had families in the villages, and many still had land there. Indeed, many even commuted from the village to the city to work. Only in St. Petersburg did a large proportion of the population sever ties with the rural lifestyle. The reasons for this close relationship between rural and urban worker was because industrialization was only in its early phase in Russia; it was still new to the Empire. It was only in the 1890s that Russia saw population booms in her industrial cities. However, Russia was able to skip some of the early developments the likes of the UK had undergone with their revolution. The industrialization of Russia happened fairly rapidly and with advanced plants and machines.

Despite having an urban working class with close ties with the rural poor (which under Marxist theory made for a less-than-adequate breeding ground for the proletarian revolution), Russia’s working class was extraordinarily militant and revolutionary. Large scale strikes were frequent, and the 1905 revolution had proven just how capable they were of decisive action. Furthermore, the working class had shown much solidarity against management and the bourgeoisie, and their demands were often political as well as industrial. Nineteen Hundred and Five had seen the implementation of the workers means of organisation – the Soviets – and they continued the struggle following the Tsar’s October Manifesto and the collapse of the middle-class Liberals' efforts against the autocracy. In the summer of 1914, the workers’ strike movement in St. Petersburg and elsewhere became so threatening that some observers thought a general mobilisation for war would endanger the very existence of the Tsar’s dynasty.

The strength of the Russian working class’s sentiment can be explained in a number of different ways. The Russian state had a big stake in many of the industries and was not afraid to supply troops to quell strikes. Therefore, strikes also had a political dimension in that they often against the laws of the state. Secondly, the peasant makeup of the working class made it more militant, not less. The Russian peasantry was not innately conservative like many of its west European counterparts; a tradition of violence and anarchic rebellion existed in the Russian countryside against landowners and officials. This peasant militancy was best exemplified in the Pugachev Revolt of the 1770s, but also manifested itself in the 1905 revolution where the peasants rose up against their former feudal masters. The 1861 emancipation had not permanently quieted the rural discontent as the conditions fostered under that agreement contained several points of contention (see above). In most cases, the urban working class was filled with first-generation peasant migrants. They were usually young and freed from the bonds of the traditional social mores of the countryside. Unused to the discipline of the factory floor, they felt resentment and unease at the new society that they had cast themselves into. A poor standard of living and poverty added to the frustrations that go along with dislocation and assimilation into an unfamiliar environment.

Russia suffered from a lack of modernity in comparison with other European powers. Development in the urban sector and the highly educated was largely incomplete. Russia had a very small middle class, and its business and commercial class remained comparatively weak. Despite a steady increase of the highly educated in the upper strata of the Russian State bureaucracy, its posts were still largely dominated by the nobility. These privileges were all the more important to the nobility since the abolition of serfdom as only a very few nobles had made the transition to capitalist, commercial agriculture.

Late Tsarist Russia was an expanding Imperial power with the largest standing army in the world. Its strength in terms of arms was a source of pride, an achievement which overlooked the nation's arcane political system. Russia’s wars from the mid nineteenth century onwards created nothing but further internal unrest. The Crimean War had led to the radical domestic reforms of the 1860s, such as the emancipation. The diplomatic defeat that Russia suffered following her intervention in the Balkans in the 1870s caused political disturbance that ended in the assassination of Alexander II. In the early 1900s Russia’s expansion in the Far East was pushing it towards a confrontation with the regional power of Japan. Though some of Nicholas II’s ministers urged caution, there was a prevailing view that regarded the Japanese as inferior to the Russian forces. This prejudice was brought to a crushing halt with the humiliating outcome of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. The outcome of the war was one of the main reasons for Russia’s plummet into Revolution in 1905.

In formal contexts, Russia’s best educated people would often describe themselves as members of the intelligentsia. This implied a westernised, educated elite who often held Liberal Democratic ideas. The intelligentsia did not view itself as an elite however; they largely regarded themselves as a classless group united in their moral concern for society, the capacity for critical thought, and, in particular, a semi-oppositionist attitude to the autocracy. As ever, not all educated Russians thought alike, and many made their way to the civil service or other state-wide offices. The intelligentsia were behind the February revolution; the Bolsheviks and the discontented working poor behind the October revolution.

Marxism, Populism and Liberalism in Russia

The Russian intelligentsia generally accepted the underlying tenets of socialism, yet differed on its implementation. Debate raged on the issue of Russian industrialisation; one view was that capitalism had produced human degradation in the west, and therefore should be avoided by Russia. The radical intellectuals who held this view have since been labelled ‘populists’, yet no coherent organisation existed when the movement was in its origins (from the 1860s onwards). Populism was the mainstream of radical thought from the 1860s to the 1880s.

The radicalism of the mid to late nineteenth century saw an increase in resistance to the State, both moral and active. The Populists went into the countryside in 1873/74, mingled with the ordinary peasants and attempted to ‘enlighten’ them. They were often met with disdain and were handed over by the peasants to the police. Furthermore, the Tsarist police were quick to arrest en masse, causing much resentment amongst the populists. The momentum for violence built rapidly to the 1881 plot to assassinate the Tsar, Alexander II. The ‘Peoples Will’ did not succeed in their attempts at changing the system. Indeed, the assassination forced the Tsarist system to become more insular and hostile to change. the usual response to Populist terrorism was anti-Semitic pogroms in the Ukraine, but in other parts of European Russia as well.

It was in the 1880s, in the wake of two Populist disasters that the Marxists emerged as a distinct group within the Russian intelligentsia. Repudiating their naive utopianist idealism, the Marxists were a small group who argued that capitalist industrialisation was inevitable in Russia and that the peasantry was already in a state of internal disintegration, being propped up only by the state. They asserted that capitalism provided the only viable path towards socialism and that the industrial proletariat created under the capitalist revolution was the only class capable of bringing about the subsequent socialist revolution. Drawing on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, they claimed this path had been proven by scientific laws of historical development.

One of the Marxists ‘scientific’ predictions proved correct, as Russia did industrialise quite rapidly in the 1890’s. The industrialisation wasn’t a spontaneous capitalist revolution like it had largely been in the west, but a state sponsored exercise with large amounts of foreign investment. To contemporaries, Russia’s rapid industrialisation seemed to be proof that the Marxist predictions were correct, and that Marxism held at least some of the answers to the intelligentsia’s ‘great questions’.

Marxism in Russia (as in other developing countries) held a different meaning than it had in the developed societies of the west. It was an ideology of modernism as well as revolution. Even Lenin made his name as a Marxist with his ‘’The Development of Capitalism in Russia’’ that was both analysis and advocacy of the process of economic modernisation. In ideological terms, Russian Marxists supported capitalism as a stage on the path to communism.

The Marxists made an important choice in the early defining controversy with the Populists; they chose the urban working class as their support base over the peasantry. This choice limited their scope, as the working class was tiny in comparison with the peasantry. This distinguished them from the traditional revolutionary intelligentsia and their almost idealistic conception of the peasantry. It also distinguished them from the Liberals, whose Liberation movements came to life shortly before the 1905 revolution. The Liberals hoped for a so called ‘bourgeois’ revolution and had support from the emerging professional class and the Liberal Zemstvo nobility.

The Marxists pursued a tactic of education of the workers, worrying the Tsarists to no end. This fostered the idea of social upward mobility, which differentiated them from the more traditional and generally less educated peasantry. From this education, the Marxists – illegally organised from 1898 as the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party – progressed to an involvement in more political labour organisation, strikes, and in 1905, revolution. 1905 displayed that the model was bottom up, not top down. The socialist parties often found it difficult keeping up with the working class revolutionary movement. Between 1898 and 1914, the Social democratic party ceased to be dominated by the intelligentsia and became in effect, a workers movement. Its leaders still came from the intelligentsia, and spent most of their time living outside Russia in Europe. In Russia however, the majority of party members and activists were workers.

Theoretically, the Marxists started with a major disadvantage. In order to achieve socialist revolution, a Liberal ‘bourgeois’ revolution had to occur beforehand, in order to topple the autocracy. Russia would have to allow capitalism to develop before the proletariat were ready to institute the socialist revolution. All this would require time, and it began to display factions within the movement between Mensheviks (Patient) and Bolsheviks (Impatient). All of this seemed irrelevant before the 1905 revolution however, as no revolution was in progress and some success had being achieved in the organisation of the working class. Furthermore, tensions were growing within the party as several Marxists began to defect to the Liberal cause during the 1890s. At around the same time, Russian social democratic leaders began to question the validity of economism. There were very few economists in the Russian movement, since most workers protests quickly evolved from industrial action, such as wage increases, to political issues. Emigrant leaders, often more sensitive and aware of continental Social Democracy than the Russian brand, were wary of the steady movement towards reformism and revisionism in European Marxist movements (Germany in particular). In the doctrinal struggles over economism, the Russian Marxists were stating very clearly that they were revolutionaries, not reformists and that their cause was the workers revolution and not the Liberal cause.

The Marxist Split

In 1903, when the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party held its second congress, the leaders disputed over a relatively minor issue, the composition of the editorial board of the party newspaper ‘’Iskra’’. Lenin’s manner at the conference was aggressive and overbearing. He had recently been more commanding in theoretical questions, such as the organisation of the party. There was tensions between Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov, the senior Russian Marxist. Furthermore, Lenin’s friendship with Yulii Martov was at breaking point.

The outcome of the second congress was a split in the party between the Bolshevik faction and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were those who followed Lenin and the Mensheviks constituted a larger and more diverse group of members (Including Martov, Plekhanov and Leon Trotsky) who thought Lenin went too far. The split was considered senseless within Russia, and many held out hope for a conciliation. Nevertheless, the split became permanent and as time passed the two groups possessed more distinct views than had been apparent in 1903. In latter years Lenin had boasted at being a ‘splitter’, meaning by this that he placed greater value on smaller, more closely knit political organisations than larger, more diverse groups. Some commentators attribute this trait to his difficulty in tolerating disagreement, a trait Trotsky once called ‘a caricature of Jacobin intolerance’.

In the years following 1903 the Mensheviks emerged as the more orthodox of the two groups who were content to allow the pace of revolution take its own course. They had more success in attracting membership in non Russian parts of the empire, while the Bolsheviks found popularity in the Russian workers. In the late pre-war years, the Mensheviks lost working class support as the workers mood became more militant: they were perceived as a more bourgeoisie party, whereas the Bolsheviks were seen as more working class and revolutionary.

The Bolsheviks, unlike the Mensheviks had a single leader, and their identity was largely shaped by Lenin’s ideas and vision. Lenin’s principal trait as party leader was party organisation. He saw the party as not only the vanguard of the proletariat revolution but also as its creator, as he argued that the proletariat alone could only achieve a trade union consciousness and not a revolutionary one. He believed that the core of the party should be professional full time revolutionaries, recruited both from the intelligentsia and the working class, but concentrating on the political organisation of the workers rather than any one social group. His dislike for dissenting ideas and strict discipline arguably reflected a wider authoritarian nature.

Lenin also differed from many other revolutionaries in not just predicting a proletarian revolution but actively seeking one. The idea that the Liberal bourgeoisie would become natural leaders following the fall of the autocracy never sat easy with Lenin.

The role of 1905

See the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904 and it quickly turned in to a series of humiliations and disaster for Russia. The early patriotism quickly waned, and the Liberal dominated Zemstvo’s attempts to aid the Russian State in its hour of need were met with frustration by the bureaucracy. This fueled the Liberal movement, as autocracy was always at its most unacceptable when it was perceived as being inefficient and incompetent. The Zemstvo nobility began to rally behind the Liberation movement, directed from Europe by Petr Struve and other Liberal activists.

While the Liberals began campaigning and marching for constitutional reform, workers’ from St. Petersburg marched in front of the Tsar’s winter palace, bringing their economic plight to his attention. Soldiers fired on the demonstrators, causing the 1905 revolution to take pace.

The revolution was characterised by widespread strikes, the first appearance of workers Soviets and a mass grassroots desire for change. Although ultimately quelled by the Tsar, the strike did at least manage to legalise political parties within a weak parliamentary system (The Duma) which in reality had little or no political power over the autocracy. Lenin called it the great dress rehearsal of the revolution, and it did offer a stage for future leaders (Such as Trotsky) to gain valuable experience that would be put to use in the 1917 revolution. Furthermore, the strike displayed the willingness of the populace to rise up against their leader should conditions be wretched enough.

The Road to Revolution – Wartime Russia

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, with Russia allied with France and the United Kingdom, and Germany allied with Austria Hungary, the political emigrants were almost entirely cut off from happenings in their home country. A wave of patriotic pride engulfed Russia and support for its war effort met strong commitment from even most of the socialists. Lenin and his Bolsheviks were of course the exception; Lenin viewed the war as an Imperialist conflict and thought a defeat would be more amenable to civil war and revolution. This was very controversial, even among socialist circles. All known Bolsheviks (including Duma deputies) were arrested for the duration of the war.

The mood quickly soured as the Russians received massive casualties (five million casualties for the whole of 1914-1917) and the German offensive penetrated deep into the western Russian Empire, causing a rush of refugees to flood into the centre of the country. Rumours spread within Russia of treason in high places most notably that of Empress Alexandra, a German princess by birth. Furthermore, the scandalous relationship between Alexandra and the charismatic Rasputin caused widespread dismay. Nicholas II assumed full control of the Russian army, which took him from the capital for long periods; Alexandra and Rasputin began to influence ministerial appointments. Relations between the government and the fourth Duma deteriorated drastically, and it resulted in the murder of Rasputin by some young nobles and a right wing Duma deputy who wished to restore honour in the Russian state and in Nicolas II himself, who they felt was being let down by the scandalous newcomer.

The autocracy’s position was weak at the outbreak of war in 1914. Society was deeply divided, and the political and bureaucratic structure was overstrained. The actions of his wife during the war while he was away with his commanders at the front further weakened the authority of the Tsar. Furthermore, to the educated elite, the bizarre stories surrounding the death of Rasputin (That he refused to die even after being poisoned, shot and drowned) the ‘faith healer’ brought in to cure their sick sons Haemophilia and the corruption surrounding the appointment of personal favourites to Ministerial positions seemed to belong to a bizarre, earlier Russia, not the modern State fighting for its very existence against the Germans.

The February Revolution

In February 1917, the autocracy collapsed in the face of popular demonstrations and the withdrawal of elite support for the regime. Russia’s future form of government would be democratic; its constitution to be decided by a constituent assembly. In the meantime, the elite and popular revolutions (The liberals, the propertied and professional classes in the first, the urban working class and the socialists in the second) would coexist, as they had done in the 1905 revolution. In practical terms, the Provisional government represented the Liberal Revolution while the Petrograd (so named during the war to make it sound less German) Soviet would speak for the people’s revolution. Their relationship to each was intended as complementary and was considered dual-power. Russian Liberals largely regarded the Socialists as allies; they regarded their desire for social reform as compatible with their special interest of political democratisation.

In the last week of February, bread shortages, strikes, lockouts and a female demonstration in honour of international women’s day brought a crowd onto the streets of Petrograd that the authorities were unable to disperse. The fourth Duma, which had reached the end of its term, asked the Emperor for a responsible and competent cabinet and asked to remain in session for the duration of the crisis. Both requests were refused, but an unauthorised Duma committee, dominated by Liberals of the Cadet party and the Progressive bloc did remain in session. The Emperors ministers largely left the city and the Tsar’s orders were to disperse the unrest. The police was weak, and the troops called in to quell the unrest were beginning to fraternise with the crowd. By February 28, the revolutionary crowd controlled the railway stations, all artillery supplies and much of the city. The military commander in Petrograd had very few troops at his disposal, and even his telephones weren’t working.

The Army command had two options; either bring in fresh troops to quell the disturbance or seek a political solution with the Duma politicians. It chose the latter alternative. At Pskov, Nicholas’s train was met by emissaries from the High Command and the Duma who respectively requested he should abdicate. After discussion, Nicholas agreed. He debated whether to abdicate in favour of his son, but worried for his health he abdicated in favour of his brother, Grand Duke Michael instead.

After reaching the capital, Nicholas was sent to join his family outside Petrograd, and thereafter remained under house arrest while the Provisional government decided what to do with him. Later, the whole family was moved to Siberia and then to the Urals, and were finally executed by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.

In the days following the Emperors abdication, the politicians of Petrograd were working excitedly. Their original goal was to get rid of the Monarch, not the entire monarchy. As a result, and Russia was no longer a monarchy. In the meantime, a self appointed Provisional government would take over the responsibilities of government. Prince Georgii Lvov, head of the Zemstvo League and a moderate liberal, became head of the new government. His cabinet included Pavel Milyukov, historian and Cadet party theoretician as foreign minister, two prominent industrialists as ministers of finance, trade and industry, and the socialist lawyer Alexsander Kerenskey as Minister for Justice.

Despite having no electoral mandate, the Passover of power went very smoothly. They based their legitimacy on the consent of the Zemstvo League, the army command and the war industries committee. However, the February revolution created two institutions of power. The other was the Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet viewed itself as a watchdog on the Provisional government, and the representatives of the working class. Their timidity and deference to the ‘bourgeoisie’ was largely based around the Mensheviks good Marxist education (They wanted to allow the Liberal revolution to run its course) and also because it believed that trouble was ahead, and it would be better to allow the Provisional government to take the blame rather than them.

The soldiers, workers and sailors who made up the rank and file were not so cautious. On 1 March, before the formal establishment of the provisional government, the ‘Order No. 1’ was issued in the name of the Petrograd Soviet. The Order No. 1 was a revolutionary document and an assertion of the Soviet’s power. It called for democratisation of the army by the creation of elected soldiers committees, reduction of officer’s disciplinary powers and, most importantly, recognition of the Soviets authority on all policy questions involving the armed forces: It argued that no governmental order to the army would be valid without the Soviets co-signature. While Order No. 1 did not actually mandate the holding of elections to confirm officers in their positions, such elections were being held in the more unruly army units. There were also reports that hundreds of navy officers had been arrested or killed by the sailors of Krondstadt and the Baltic fleet during the February Days. Order No. 1 had strong overtones of class war, and failed to offer re-assurance about the prospects for class co-operation. It displayed an extremely unworkable form of dual power; in essence, the ordinary enlisted men paid homage to the Soviets, the officers paid homage to the Provisional government. This was not a situation that could last much longer.

The relationship between the Soviet executive and the Provisional government in the Spring and Summer of 1917 was intense and quarrelsome. In May, the Liberal government joined in an alliance with socialists, whose influence was predominant in the Soviet executive committee. The socialists were not eager to enter the government, but felt they had to do it to save a tottering regime at a time of national crisis. Symbolically, they made a choice to work with the ‘responsible’ government as opposed to the ‘irresponsible’ popular revolution.

Popular hostility to the Provisional government mounted in late spring, as war weariness increased and the economic situation in the towns deteriorated. During the street demonstrations that occurred in July (The July Days), demonstrators carried banners calling for ‘’all power to the Soviets’, which in effect meant the removal of power of the Provisional government. The Soviet executive rejected the slogan and in fact, the demonstration was as much against the Soviets as it was against the Provisional government, who it was felt were not eager enough to take power.

The Bolsheviks Return

Most Russian Bolsheviks were either in exile in Russia (Such as in Siberia, as Stalin and Molotov were) or abroad in Europe, as Lenin was. The Bolsheviks exiled within the Empire were the first to return, while Lenin and other Bolsheviks were eager to return to Russia. Their journey would be difficult however, as the continent was embroiled in war. When Lenin did return to Russia, he immediately began to quarrel with the Soviets leaders, and declared no co-operation with the Provisional government should occur. He took a hardline stance, and was dismissive of the achievements of the February Revolution. He aimed to bring about the next stage of socialist revolution; the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.

Lenin’s April Theses argued for ‘all power to the Soviets’ and ‘Peace, land and bread’. These hardline Marxist positions alienated many, even within the socialist movement in the Soviets. Many believed Lenin became out of touch during his period of exile. Nonetheless, people slowly rallied to him and the Bolsheviks removed themselves from the socialist coalition. Socialist unity seemed self evident to those who had prided themselves at ending the divisions within socialism before February.

Despite all of this, the Bolsheviks support was rising at a grass roots level. Despite not winning any big city elections of any kind, their influence could be seen at the committee level. Membership increased from around 2,000 in February (Though this figure is considered suspect) to around 100,000 by the end of April and 350,000 by October.

The February revolution had given birth to a large and diverse number of workers’ organisations throughout Russia, principally in the industrial centres such as Moscow or Petrograd. Leadership usually came from within the working class rather than the intelligentsia. New trade unions were established; and at the plant level, workers began to set up factory committees to deal with management. The factory committees, closest to the grass roots, tended to be the most radical of the workers’ organisations. In the factory committees of Petrograd, the Bolsheviks had assumed a dominating position by May 1917.

The road to the October Revolution

In mid June, Kerensky (Who was at this time the Provisional Government’s Minister of War), encouraged the Russian army to mount a major offensive on the Galician front. It was the first serious military undertaking since the February Revolution, as the Germans had been content to watch the disintegration of the Russian forces without engaging themselves further in the east. The Russian Galician offensive, conducted in June and early July, failed with an estimated 200,000 casualties. It was a disaster at home and at the front. Morale in the army deteriorated further, and the Germans began a successful counter attack that continued throughout the summer and autumn. Russian desertions, already rising as peasant soldiers responded to news of land seizures in the countryside, grew to epidemic proportions. The Provisional government’s credit was undermined and tension between the government and military leaders increased. At the beginning of July, a governmental crisis began with the withdrawal of the liberal ministers and the resignation of the head of the Provisional government, Prince Lvov.

In the midst of the crisis, Petrograd erupted once again with mass demonstrations, street violence and popular disorder of 3-5 July known as the July Days. The crowd included large numbers of sailors, soldiers and workers from the Petrograd plants. To the provisional government, it looked like a Bolshevik attempt at revolution. The Krondstadt sailors, whose arrival in Petrograd set off the disorders, had Bolsheviks amongst their leaders, carried banners with the Bolshevik slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’, and made Bolshevik Party headquarters at Ksesinskaya Palace their first destination. However, when they reached the Palace, Lenin’s greeting was subdued. He did not encourage them to take violent action against the Provisional government or the present Soviet leadership; and, although the crowd moved on to the Soviet and milled around in a threatening manner, no such action was taken. Confused and lacking leadership and specific plans, the demonstrators roamed the city, fell to drinking and looting, and finally dispersed.

The episode further undermined the Provisional government and their dual power with the Petrograd Soviet. It indicated widespread anger at the government, the soviet, dual power and the coalition socialists. However, it also displayed a weakness within the Bolsheviks. The revolt took the Bolsheviks by surprise, and Lenin had effectively done little to aid it. The affair damaged Socialist morale and Lenin’s credibility.

The Bolsheviks were blamed for the July days by the Provisional government and the moderate socialists. The government cracked down, withdrawing parliamentary immunity and arrested several prominent Bolsheviks (Including Trotsky, who had taken a hard left position in the Bolsheviks upon his return to Russia in May). Orders were issued for arrests to be placed on Lenin and Grigorii Zinoviev. During the July days the government had indicated that they believed Lenin was a German agent, and the Bolsheviks were battered by patriotic denunciations in the press that temporarily damaged their popularity in the factories and army. The Bolshevik central committee feared for Lenin’s life. He went into hiding, and early in August, disguised as a workman, he took refuge in Finland.

The political turmoil had driven the liberals to the right, in order to accommodate the industrialists and military commanders, and the socialists further to the left. It seemed that the Provisional government would fall either from a left wing coup (Petrograd being the likely culprit) or a right wing coup intent on installing a law and order dictatorship, an eventuality being discussed by the upper military class and several industrialists. In August, the coup from the right was finally attempted by General Lavr Kornilov, whom Kerensky had recently appointed commander in chief with a mandate to restore law and order to the Russian army. The Germans captured Riga in the wake of his move, causing panic and suspicion to spread among Russia’s military and civilian leaders. In the last week of August, General Kornilov sent troops from the front to ‘quell disorders’ in Petrograd in order to ‘save the Republic’.

The coup failed largely because of the unreliability of the troops and the actions of the workers. Railway men diverted and obstructed the troop trains; printers stopped publication of newspapers supporting Kornilov’s move and metalworkers rushed out to meet the oncoming troops and explain that Petrograd was calm and that their officers had deceived them. Under this pressure, the troop’s morale disintegrated and the coup was aborted outside Petrograd without any serious military engagement and General Krymov, the commanding officer acting under Kornilov’s orders, surrendered to the Provisional government and subsequently committed suicide. Kornilov himself was arrested at army headquarters offering no resistance and taking full responsibility.

In Petrograd, politicians of the centre and right rushed to reaffirm their loyalty to the Provisional government, which Kerensky continued to lead. Kerensky’s standing had been damaged by the Kornilov affair, and the government weakened. The executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet also emerged with little credit, since resistance had been organised at the local and factory level, causing an upsurge in support for the Bolsheviks. The Army high command was hit hardest of all, since the arrest of the commander in chief and failure of the coup left it demoralised and confused and relations between officers and men deteriorated sharply. To make matters worse, the German advance continued, with Petrograd the objective. In mid September, General Alekseev, Kornilov’s successor resigned as commander in chief. He felt he could no longer take responsibility for an army whose discipline had collapsed and in which ”our officers are martyrs”.

The left gained most from the affair, as it leant substance to the notion of a counter-revolutionary threat from the right, demonstrated working class strength and solidarity, and at the same time convinced many workers’ that only their armed vigilance could save the revolution from its enemies. The Bolsheviks, with many of its leaders in jail or in hiding, played no special role in the resistance. But the great swing in popular opinion towards them, which only accelerated following the Kornilov affair, enabled them to reap future benefit from the creation of workers’ militia units or ‘Red Guards’ which began in response to the Kornilov threat. The Bolsheviks key strength was that they were the only group unaffiliated with the bourgeoisie and the February revolution which brought that group to political power; and were therefore the party most identifiable with ideas of workers’ power and armed uprising.

The October Revolution

From April to August, the Bolsheviks’ slogan "All Power to the Soviets" was essentially provocative—a taunt aimed at the moderates who controlled the Petrograd Soviet and did not want to take power. The situation changed after the Kornilov affair and the moderates lost control of the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet on August 31 and a majority in the Moscow Soviet on 5 September.

In September, Lenin wrote from his refuge in Finland urging the Bolshevik Party to prepare for an armed insurrection. The revolutionary moment had come, he said, and must be seized before it was too late. In particular, he wanted the Bolsheviks to act before the second congress of Soviets in October, thus pre-empting any decision the Congress may make.

Lenin’s advocacy of immediate revolution was passionate, but did not lead to the action he demanded. The Bolshevik leaders wondered about the value of taking such a gamble when the tide of power was swinging their way anyway. Moreover, Lenin attempting to lead the party from exile and that simply made his demands look weak and contradictory. He advocated revolution but refused to come to Russia to lead it, even after the Provisional government had allowed radical politicians to return. When Lenin did return from Finland at the end of the first week of October, he remained isolated from the rest of the Bolsheviks, communicating with his Central Committee through a series of angry letters.

Bolshevik leaders, such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev had objections to an armed insurrection, preferring to allow the agitation of the Bolshevik-dominated Soviets to increase their political power. However, rumours persisted of a planned coup, and the momentum for it was growing. Plus, by this time the socialists had thuroughly infiltrated the Military Revolutionary Committee which had been established to organise workers’ resistance to counter revolution. With the German army advancing on Petrograd, any governmental attempt to dismantle the Military Revolutionary Committee itself would ignite revolution.

The insurrection began on October 24, which was the eve of the meeting of the Second Congress of Soviets. The forces of the Soviets' military revolutionary committee began to occupy key government institutions, such as the telegraph offices and the railway stations. They set up roadblocks on the city’s bridges and surrounded the Winter Palace, where the provisional government was in session. The Bolsheviks encountered almost no violent resistance. The streets remained calm, and citizens continued about their daily business. On the night of October 24-25, Lenin came out of hiding and joined his comrades at the Smolny Institute, a former school for young women which was then used as the headquarters of the Soviet. He was calm, having apparently recovered from his anxiety, and he resumed his old position of leadership. By the afternoon of the 25th, the coup was all but accomplished except for the taking of the Winter Palace, which was still under siege with the Provisional government members inside. The Palace fell late in the evening in a confused assault on a small number of defenders. The occupying forces allowed Kerensky to flee. The February regime had fallen.

Confusion now surrounded who would assume the place of the provisional government. The Bolsheviks had organised the uprising through the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet but the defeat of the provisional government was generally attributed to the Soviets. The question was not clarified by the Congress of Soviets which opened in Petrograd on October 25. A majority of the Congress delegates had come with a mandate to support transfer of power to the Soviets. The Bolsheviks did not have an outright majority, and thus a mandate did not imply approval of the Bolsheviks’ actions. That action was criticised very harshly by a large group of Mensheviks, who quit the Congress in protest. Lenin’s old friend Martov, who led a different group of Mensheviks, questioned the seizure of power in a more conciliatory manner. Trotsky condemned these critics in a memorable phrase, to ‘the dust-heap of history’.

At the Congress, the Bolsheviks called for the transfer of power to workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ Soviets throughout the country. In terms of centralised power, the old Provisional government was to be replaced by the central executive committee of the Soviets, elected by the Congress and including representatives from a number of political parties. To the surprise of many delegates, a Bolshevik Party spokesman announced that central government functions would be assumed by a new, all-Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars The head of the new government was Lenin, and Trotsky became the People’s commissar of Foreign affairs.

Lenin wanted the Soviets to take power provided they were dominated by Bolsheviks. In the provinces, the Soviets did take power, and the local Soviets were not always dominated by the Bolsheviks. Lenin was firm on the issue of coalition in the new central government. Years before, he had prided himself before on being a ‘splitter’ within Marxist circles as his authoritarian nature made opposing viewpoints intolerable to him. In November 1917, when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed the possibility of moving from an all Bolshevik government to a broader socialist coalition, Lenin was adamantly against it, even in the face of several Bolshevik resignations as a result. Later, a few SR's who supported the October revolution were admitted to the Council of People’s Commissars, but they were politicians without a strong party base and were forced out of the government after the left wing SR’s staged an uprising in protest of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Following this, the Bolsheviks made no further efforts at making coalitions with other groups.

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly of November 1917, the Bolsheviks won 25% of the popular vote. This left them second to the SRs, who won 40% of the vote. The Bolsheviks took Petrograd and Moscow, and largely won urban Russia as a whole. In the armed forces, the Bolsheviks had a clear majority of the Northern and Western Front forces as well as the Baltic Fleet. On the southern fronts and in the Black Sea Fleet, they lost to the SRs and the Ukrainian Parties. The SRs overall winning vote was due to their support in the countryside, their more familiar constituency.

The Bolsheviks did not view their electoral defeat as a defeat. They did not abdicate because they had failed to win, much to the anger of the Constituent Assembly, which was disbanded. However, in terms of claiming their mandate, the Bolsheviks argued that it was not the population as a whole they claimed to represent. They had taken power in the name of the working class, and since they had won their support in the cities, they had won the election.

Aftermath

A Civil War soon broke out between the Bolsheviks and their detractors. Monarchists, militarists, capitalists, conservatives and just about everyone else formed a loose coalition and an army, the White Army. To defeat them, Trotsky emerged as a champion of the Red Army and it subsequently led to the formation of the Soviet Union.

Lenin's attempts to smash the capitalist system led to the economic doctrine of War Communism. Since this caused widespread disaster in the countryside, causing hunger, pain and suffering, he softened his position and introduced the New Economic Policy. The Soviet Union was to have a turbulent lifetime, characterised often by economic suffering and cruel dictatorship, most potently marked under the regime of Joseph Stalin.