The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party assembles
its Sixth Congress in Petrograd “semi-legally,” as Trotsky says. The
Central Committee elected by this Congress later voted for the armed
insurrection now known as the October Revolution.
About the first
thing the Congress did was pass unanimously a resolution that Lenin and the
other Bolsheviks who had been indicted should not turn themselves in. Stalin
had argued they should, but only “If,
however, power is wielded by an authority which can safeguard our comrades
against violence and is fair-dealing at least to some extent ....” But no-one
believed these conditions would ever be met. Lenin himself was still in hiding,
so the Congress named him “honorary” chairman instead.
The report on party organization revealed
membership had tripled, to 240,000, in the previous three months.
The main business of the Congress was to rethink
the party’s program in light of the July days and other recent events. For
example, since the Compromisers had led the Petrograd Soviet into complicity
with the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the Kerensky ministry, the
Bolsheviks dropped the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” The Congress
also adopted a resolution identifying the conditions under which an
insurrection would be the correct response. Lenin’s underground
writings, and communications through a secret liaison, usually
Stalin, contributed to the
result.
The Inter-District Organization of United
Social-Democrats or Mezhraiontsy
(sometimes translated “Interdistrictites,” though I have been calling them “Trotskyites”
after their most prominent member) joined the Bolshevik party while the
Congress sat. The Mezhraiontsy
had at last dropped their project of union between the Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks; the latter were now deeply involved with the Compromisers. Among
the prominent social democrats who then became Bolsheviks were (the
links lead to Wikipedia) Leon Trotsky, Adolf Joffe, Anatoly
Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky, David Riazanov, V. Volodarsky, Lev Karakhan, Dmitry Manuilsky, and Sergey Ezhov (Tsederbaum).
Early August (old style) also saw the convocation
of the bourgeois-aligned Congress and Trade and Industry and Congress of
Provincial Commissars. The latter consisted mainly of Cadets, while the opening
speaker at the former happened indiscreetly to mention the “bony hand of
hunger” in a tirade against taxes on commerce. As this was a not very thinly
veiled threat of factory lock-outs, Trotsky says, the phrase “entered...into
the political dictionary of the revolution,” and eventually “cost the
capitalists dear.”
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