April Theses, April Days

About April 14 – April 1, 1917: Somewhere in Finland. A group of Bolsheviks travels to Finland to greet Lenin as he approaches Petrograd. Lenin chided one of them, the right-leaning Kamenev, for positions he had taken in Pravda on cooperation with the Provisional Government and in favor of the defensist war policy.

April 16 – April 3, 1917: At the Finland Station. Lenin arrives in Petrograd at the Finland Station and is given a bouquet that Trotsky says must have made him feel very awkward. He was greeted by Cheidze, the Menshevik president of the Petrograd Soviet.

Cheidze felt he had to caution Lenin about cooperation with the Provisional Government and its defensist policies. Ignoring this, Lenin concluded his brief set of remarks saying, “Long live the world socialist revolution!”

Lenin and his entourage, including Zinoviev the agitator, drove to Bolshevik headquarters in armored cars. They stopped from time to time so Lenin could deliver essentially the same brief speech to crowds along the way.

At headquarters, the expropriated mansion of a court ballerina, Lenin impatiently endured numerous speeches of welcome. At length he addressed the party. For two hours he spoke against the defensist, collaborationist, and right opportunist policies the Petrograd Bolsheviks had let themselves be drawn into. He must also have explained what he thought was the correct line, for as we’ll see he read out the “April Theses” the next day.

Nobody seems to have taken notes. The speech left its hearers dumbfounded, wondering whether he really meant what he’d said.

The All Russia Conference of Soviets was just ending that day.

April 17 – April 4, 1917: The April Theses. Twice, once at a meeting of the Bolsheviks and again at a meeting to which the Mensheviks were also invited, Lenin reads his ten “April Theses.” He said later that week, prefacing the version published in Pravda:

I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.

The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to prepare the theses in writing. I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tseretelli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

The first thesis addresses the policy of the revolution to the war, “…[N]ot the slightest concession to ‘revolutionary defensism’ is permissible.” This includes the “error” of fighting only to defend the homeland, with no thought of annexations or indemnities, as the bourgeois Provisional Government would have it publicly – in spite of their private alignments with capitalist interests at home and abroad.

The next four theses address the phenomenon of dual government – power being shared between the soviets and Provisional Government with the soviets as the junior partner – under the heading Fraternization. Lenin sees the dual government as a transitional phase between the bourgeois February Revolution and the proletarian revolution that was yet to come. But the party, a small minority even in the soviets, should not therefore with join the Mensheviks and social democrats in support of the Provisional Government. The party’s goal should be to transfer “the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies,” not ”to return to a parliamentary republic.”

The sixth and seventh theses call for nationalization of all lands under the soviets and consolidation of all banks in a single state bank under the Soviet. Yet in the eighth thesis, Lenin does not advocate immediate transfer of ownership of the means of production to the workers, but rather only the strengthening of the workers’ soviets.

The ninth and tenth theses set forth the political tasks of the Bolshevik party, to include the convocation of a new revolutionary International, one that would specifically exclude social democrats of the stripe who favored collaboration with the Provisional Government.

Visit this page to find the entire text of the Pravda article and all ten theses.

April 20 – April 7, 1917: Pravda publishes “April Theses.” See the link in the entry for April 17 – April 4, 1917.

April 21 – April 8, 1917: Pravda’s Critique. The editors split with Lenin on the “immediate transformation of [the Russian] revolution in to a socialist revolution." In fact, right Bolsheviks continued to struggle against Lenin’s program of action down to the beginning of the October Revolution.

April 29 – April 16, 1917: Trotsky Released. Trotsky is released from British detention in Canada at the request of the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government, Miliukov, who was himself being pressured by the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky took ship for Russia.

April 30 – April 17, 1917: War Invalids Demonstrate. The Cadets, the bourgeois party of Foreign Minister Miliukov, organize a pro-war demonstration of veterans invalided by the war.

Meantime, in provincial elections, democratically elected dumas are chosen. As the soviets retained local control, Trotsky notes, these bodies were nullities.

May 1 – April 18, 1917: International Socialist May Day. Russian socialists celebrate International Socialist May Day according to the new style calendar, that is, when other socialists around the world are celebrating it – though it happens to be April 18 on the old style calendar. It became a national holiday; not only factories but also government offices shut down.

The holiday atmosphere spread to the front at staff headquarters in Moghilev, where even the tsarist generals marched. Elsewhere Russian troops celebrated with Austro-German POWs, singing the same revolutionary songs in different languages.

This was also the day Foreign Minister Miliukov chose to send a note reaffirming Russia’s loyalty to her allies and her pledge not to make a separate peace. This part was generally agreeable to the defensists in the Soviet. But the subtext endorsed the annexations and indemnities his British and French counterparts expected as part of the peace agreement. Naturally one of the annexations Miliukov was contemplating was that of the Dardanelles, at the expense of Germany’s ally Turkey. This raid had been planned for, but the soldiers eventually refused to carry the plan out.

May 2 – April 19, 1917: The Executive Committee Meets. Miliukov’s note is the topic at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. The meeting ran late without producing any consensus or plan of action.

May 3 – April 20, 1917: The April Days. The text of Miluvov’s note hits the Petrograd papers, sparking three days of demonstrations: the “April Days.”

The Finland Regiment marched to the seat of the Provisional Government at the head of over 30,000 armed soldiers. Workers left their factories and joined them. The banners read, “Down with Miliukov!” “Down with Guchov,” Minister of War in the Provisional Government, too.

The demonstrators lacked a specific program; nor was the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, hastily reconvened, able to supply one. In reaction, General Kornilov, not for the last time, offers troops for suppressing the demonstrations; bourgeois agitators denounce Lenin as a German agent.

May 4 – April 21, 1917: The Dual Government Meets. As the workers and soldiers regather in the streets, ministers of the Provisional Government meet with the Executive Committee of the Soviet. Neither side of the dual government knew what to do about the demonstrations. Prince Lvov, President of the Council of Ministers, thought maybe the Provisional Government should withdraw. Chernov, Minister of Agriculture, said it might be sufficient for Miliukov to exchange the Foreign Ministry for the portfolio of the Minister of Public Education. Miliukov refused both that suggestion and the suggestion that he write a new note. Some members of the Soviet would apparently have been satisfied with a better explanation of the first one.

Meanwhile the demonstrations, which had been announced by Bolshevik workers from Vyborg, continued. The demonstrators ignored the plea of the President of the Petrograd Soviet, Cheidze, to disperse. Counterdemonstrators, organized by the Cadet Party, clashed with the workers. General Kornilov made good his threat to mobilize cavalry and artillery against the workers. Some officers tried to seize one of their banners. Gunfire was exchanged.

But the Soviet ordered the revolutionary regiments to stay in their barracks, and Kornilov’s to return there. The soldiers obeyed the Soviet’s orders; thereafter none of the troops would march unless the orders were counter-signed by the Soviet.

For its part, the Executive Committee would be satisfied with a verbal explanation of Miliukov’s note; he was not compelled to resign. Having come so close to civil war in the capital (and the situation was much the same in Moscow), the Soviet ordered demonstrations to stop for two days. The Bolshevik Central Committee subsequently agreed to the halt.

May 5 – April 22, 1917: Izvestia’s Interpretation. Izvestia, the official organ of the Petrograd Soviet, thinks it necessary to declare that the Soviet had not interfered with the “legally constituted” authority of the Provisional Government by its actions during the April Days. Since the demonstrators were calling for more rather than less interference, the Soviet thus remained less revolutionary-minded than the people themselves.

Nor could a Bolshevik motion for a vote of no confidence in the government come within hundreds of votes of passage. The Petrograd Soviet also politely ignored a resolution of the Helsinki Soviet, backed by revolutionary sailors, offering to help remove the Provisional Government.

May 7 – April 24, 1917: Bolshevik Party Conference. The All-Russia Bolshevik Party Conference called for in the April Theses begins. Neither Stalin nor Kamenev were named to the five-member praesidium.

Lenin spoke against misdirected violence, violence that is not being used as a tactic to further some specific revolutionary strategy. He also presented a resolution “On the Attitude Towards the Provisional Government” that had been adopted by the Petrograd conference of the party. The resolution recognized the government as an organ of the bourgeoisie and landowners, enumerating the programs such as land reform and the eight-hour workday it had failed to act upon or actively resisted. The resolution was published in Pravda on May 10 – April 27.