Bolsheviks Convene

One hundred years ago today, plus three, the Bolsheviks convened a party congress at a time when the party itself was barely legal. They passed a resolution to say Lenin, then in hiding, ought not to turn himself in; and welcomed the Trotskyites, up to then a separate party, into the Bolshevik fold. Meanwhile Kerensky, apparently satisfied that both the right socialists and the bourgeois Cadets considered him “indispensable,” had agreed two days before to form as prime minister the government that became the Second Coalition.

 Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kerensky’s Government here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

  

August 16 – August 3, 1917. The Congress Elects the Central Committee

Last on the agenda of the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. is the election of the party’s Central Committee. Lenin was made chairman; Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev were members. Two former Mezhraiontsys also sat on the committee, Trotsky for foreign affairs and Uritsky for interior affairs. 

Only one vote out of 134 was cast against Lenin. This (seemingly the same) individual was joined by one or two others in voting against Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky.

August 8 – July 26, 1917: Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party Convenes

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.”

July 15 – July 2, 1917: Cadets Resign Their Ministries

The four ministers representing the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) in the Coalition Government resign en masse. The Cadets had been the voice of the bourgeoisie in the government, led by former Minister of War Miliukov, whom Kerensky replaced in May.

The resignations became the signal for the July Days. Trotsky analyzes the Cadet political strategy as follows. The pretext for the resignations was an agreement the Coalition Government struck with the Ukraine; it did not accommodate the imperial ambitions of the bourgeoisie sufficiently well. The timing coincided with the failure of the summer offensive, known to the well-informed in the capital if not to the public generally. Thus the right-socialists remaining in the government would have to face the fallout of the failure, including the protests of the revolutionary masses, alone. If the government (a “coalition” now of only right-socialist parties) had to put down the anticipated demonstrations by force, an opening might develop for weakening the Soviet side of the dual government. So Miliukov may have thought. And things did start to work out along these lines.

Meanwhile, Trotsky and Lunacharsky addressed the Machine Gun regiment on the occasion of the departure of one of their companies to the front as replacements. This was the regiment that, after the June Demonstration, had resolved not to send out replacements unless the war “…shall have a revolutionary character.” They now declared this company the “last” replacement company they would agree to send. The regiment proved to be an open flame amid the combustibles of the July Days.

Also on this day, on the occasion of a conference of the Trotskyites, Pravda printed a statement on their behalf, saying that there were “no differences either in principle or tactics” between them and the Bolsheviks.