Coalition Government

May 9 – April 26, 1917: Coalition Government? Prince Lvov – in effect – invites members of the Petrograd Soviet to join the Provisional Government. The actual words of the announcement invite “those active, creative forces of the country” who weren’t already in the government to join it. As we’ll see, the proposal was soon to be acted upon.

May 10 – April 27, 1917: Resolution on the War. Satisfied with revisions to the original draft, Lenin speaks in favor of the party’s resolution on the war. Denouncing the war as imperialist, the resolution declared against annexations and indemnities, against “revolutionary defensism,” and, ironically, against a separate peace. Of course, the “democratic peace” the resolution called for could only occur if proletarians in all the belligerent countries held the state power and so agreed. To this end, fraternization with enemy soldiers at the front, already taking place, was encouraged.

Pravda published the resolution on May 12 – April 29.

May 12 – April 29, 1917: All Russia Bolshevik Party Conference Ends. Besides the resolutions described in prior entries, the conference considers reports and resolutions on the party’s attitude toward the provincial soviets, revisions to its program, the agrarian and nationalist questions, and the current situation of the international proletarian revolution.

The party’s agrarian policy sought to align the peasants in the countryside with the workers in the cities under the Bolshevik banners. It called for confiscation of the landed estates of the nobility, church, and crown, nationalization of the lands, and transfer of the lands to the peasantry under leasehold. The party also undertook to organize the peasants in an independent arm, and support their efforts in existing peasant soviets and land committees.

A new Central Committee was also elected; Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, and Sverdlov were among those given seats.

After the April Days, the votes in elections to the soviets begin to shift, favorably to the Bolsheviks.

May 13 – April 30, 1917: Miliukov Resigns. Unable to resist backlash for the handling of his policy on the war and annexation (i.e., the Dardanelles), Miliukov resigns his post as Foreign Minister. Guchov, the Minister of War, having refused to sign the Declaration of the Rights of the Soldiers, also resigned his post.

This left some portfolios open for distribution to the socialists who had been invited to join the Provisional Government. Already some of the provincial soviets, including that of Moscow, had declared against participation. On the other hand, some of the soldiers seemed to prefer having a socialist in charge of the war.

May 17 – May 4, 1917: Trotsky Arrives. Released from a British prisoner of war camp in Canada some weeks before, Trotsky arrives in Petrograd. Among his first acts was speaking against participation in the Provisional Government.

Meanwhile, the First All-Russian Conference of Peasants’ Deputies convened.

May 18 – May 5, 1917: Coalition Government! Prince Lvov’s proposal offers six of the fifteen ministerial portfolios to the socialists. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet voted to accept it, Bolsheviks only voting against.

Lvov was to remain as premier. Kerensky, a Social Revolutionary who was already in the government, took the war ministry; the foreign ministry stayed with the Cadets in the person of Tereshchenko. Socialists got the ministries of labor and of trade and industry, and the Menshevik Tseretilli became minister of posts. No Bolshevik joined the government.

Russia’s allies in the Entente seem to have been pleased. A broader government embracing leaders of the socialist revolution might be better able to keep Russia in the war. This was certainly Kerensky’s intention.

May 24 – May 11, 1917: Kerensky to the Front. War Minister Kerensky travels to the front to agitate for an offensive.

May 25 – May 12, 1917: Crimes of the Peasantry. Prince Lvov, Premier of the Coalition Government, finds it necessary to denounce the crimes of the peasants. The “crimes” had been going on, increasingly, since April, in part because the government had done little or nothing about land reform except to form land committees in rural districts. The committees were permitted to discuss the matter but not given official power to do anything about it.

So some peasants had been taking matters into their own hands, confiscating the lands and weapons of the rural nobility, seizing animals and equipment, etc. They even disrupted land surveys in order to prevent sales of land by the owning classes. In many cases, revolutionized peasant-soldiers on leave led these efforts.

May 26 – May 13, 1917: The Kronstadt Soviet and Sailors. This episode begins when the Kronstadt soviet removes the Cadet governor who had been appointed by the Provisional Government, and assumes control of the island and its fortress itself. The island and fortress lie at the mouth of the Neva River, not far from Petrograd. The episode has a sequel.

May 27 – May 14, 1917: Kerensky Issues Orders. War Minister Kerensky issues orders telling the troops to “go where your leaders conduct you,” gratuitously adding they would “carry on the points of [their] bayonets – peace.”

During this time the Coalition Government convened a “special conference” to discuss calling a Constituent Assembly. Nothing came of it; the term “Constituent Assembly” continued to be a mask for the bourgeois government’s inaction on the revolutionary programs and policies demanded by the soviets.

May 29 – May, 16, 1917: Resolutions of the Soviet. The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet adopts a number of resolutions that Lenin considered to be on the way to the proletarian state. They called for state-run monopolies and trusts, regulated distribution of goods and commodities, price fixing, and oversight of credit. The next day the Minister of Trade and Industry resigned; other than that, the Coalition Government did nothing.

June, 1917: Root Mission. President Wilson sends former Secretary of War Elihu Root to Petrograd with messages on the United States war aims and conditions for securing US loans for the further prosecution of the war. He summed up the US attitude, as Wikipedia says, very trenchantly: "No fight, no loans."

Thus, the US offered credits of up to $75 million, contingent on Russia undertaking the summer offensive. The Romanovs expressed a desire to subscribe, contingent on the state treasury’s support for the tsar’s family. But the Russian big bourgeoisie refused to subscribe.

June 4 – May 22, 1917: The Agrarian Question. Lenin addresses the All-Russian Conference of Peasants’ Deputies on agrarian policy. He made it clear that nationalization of the lands was the Bolshevik policy, as opposed to transfer of ownership to individual peasants as private property.

Under nationalization, the state would own the land, and rent it back to farmers, “free labor on free soil,” on terms “equal for all.” The party considered this the best way to protect the livelihood of poor peasants as against the richer, petit bourgeois class of peasants. Model farms were to be established on larger tracts confiscated from the nobility, church, and crown.

You can read Lenin’s address to the conference by following the link.

At the front, the Chief of Staff reported disaffection among the troops and continuing fraternization with enemy troops. On the Rumanian front, he said, “…the infantry does not want to advance.” Trotsky provides plenty of specific examples of disaffection.

June 5 – May 23, 1917: Changes in Command. War Minister Kerensky replaces General Alexeiev with General Brussilov as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. Brussilov was thought to be more enterprising, thus more amenable to carrying out the desired offensive.

This set off a series of dismissals by Kerensky and Brussilov, including that of Brussilov himself. Some generals were dismissed for “indulgence” to the regimental soldiers’ committees (from which officers were excluded). Others were dismissed for the opposite reason, “resisting democratization” of the army. For “excessive indulgence” to the committees, Brussilov was eventually replaced with Kornilov. But Kornilov himself had been dismissed from command in Petrograd because he’d proven unable to get along with democratic elements in the government.

June 6 – May 24, 1917: Upheaval in Kronstadt. At the urging of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, the Kronstadt Soviet places itself under the Provisional Government. But it reversed the decision the next day. The sailors had put some 80 officers of the fleet under arrest.

Two days later (June 8 – May 27), the Petrograd Soviet put the sailors on trial in absentia. Trotsky served, unsuccessfully as the sequel shows, as their defense counsel.

June 10 – May 28, 1917: Conference of Peasants’ Deputies Adjourns. The Conference, caught between opposition to the Provisional Government’s land policy (or lack of one) and its distaste for the Bolshevik solution (i.e., nationalization), selects a Social Revolutionary executive committee and president.

In the meantime, the district land committees passed increasingly under the control of the peasantry, and were increasingly able to exercise control over the use of the land. This happened mostly peacefully, accompanied by a shift in the countryside to alignment with the Bolsheviks.