Overnight November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: Politics of Insurrection

Meanwhile, sometime after midnight, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets opens a joint session of the workers and soldiers sections. Tseretilli was absent, Cheidze with him, both back home in Georgia. This left the Menshevik Dan to speak for the compromisist faction.

Dan, of course quite ignorant of how things were going and would go, gave arguments like those Kamenev and Zinoviev had given: the insurrection would ruin the revolution, the counter-revolution was too strong. So the Central Executive would not permit it: “Only over its dead body will the hostile camps cross their bayonets.” The left benches mocked, “Yes, it’s been dead a long time.” Truth, it seems, stood with the benches.

Trotsky pointed out that it was over-late for the Mensheviks to adopt the Bolshevik lines on peace and land, just as it had been over-late for Kerensky to suspend the death penalty. Anyhow, it was too late to forbid insurrection. Trotsky now openly declared that the insurrection had taken the offensive. He says, “The astounded members of the Central Executive Committee found no strength even to protest.”

Reed says the Menshevik Lieber nevertheless rose to speak, arguing that the proletariat was not ready to take power. Bolsheviks would speak, then leave the hall to consult with the Military Revolutionary Committee. Another Bolshevik would leave the committee and deliver a speech.

A length a compromisist offered a resolution empowering the Central Executive to formulate and issue decrees on peace and land. Volodarsky answered, no, that is for the Congress of Soviets to do, and the Bolsheviks left the hall. What was left of the Central Executive passed the resolution; the session broke up at about 4:00 a.m. Maybe they were surprised to see how peaceful the streets of an insurrection could look as they made their ways home.

By 3:20 a.m., the War Ministry was wiring the Caucasus: ovation for Trotsky, his claim of bloodless victory, bridges and rail stations in the hands of the Bolsheviks. “[T]he government will be unable to resist with the forces at hand.”

November 2 – October 20, 1917: Kamenev’s Resignation, etc.

The Bolshevik Central Committee meets in the absence of both Lenin and Kamenev. After his “trick” (Lenin’s word) at the Petrograd Soviet, Kamenev offered his resignation from the Central Committee, making himself freer to oppose its decisions. Trotsky obliged him by putting the item on the agenda.

Trotsky moved the resignation be accepted. Sverdlov read a letter from Lenin criticizing Kamenev and Zinoviev as “strikebreakers,” and characterizing the way Kamenev had twisted Trotsky’s words as “plain petty cheating.” Stalin spoke against acceptance, but the motion passed five votes to three, with Stalin among those against. The committee also forbade Kamenev’s and Zinoviev’s agitation against the party’s policies, again over Stalin’s dissent.

This was but one of a number of signs of fissures in the party as the pressure of the coming insurrection mounted. On the day of the committee meeting, the party paper printed a letter from Zinoviev saying that he had moved closer to Lenin’s views and accepted what Trotsky said in the Soviet. The editor, Stalin, printed it over comments that this was also the meaning of Kamenev’s “declaration” in the Petrograd Soviet (though no-one believed this but Stalin) and that the “sharpness of tone” of Lenin’s article obscured the agreement of the party “in fundamentals” (though, as Trotsky says, the fundamental question at that time was the imminence of the insurrection, over which Kamenev, at any rate, was still fighting).

Stalin offered to resign from the editorial board, but the offer was not accepted.

The American journalist Reed got the story on the insurrection from Volodarsky the next day. But because Volodarsky was not on the Central Committee, and might not have been at the meeting, the version Reed reports has a touch of the fabulous. Lenin, Volodarsky said, ruled out the 6^th, because the insurrection needed an all-Russian basis, and the Congress of Soviets would not yet have assembled. Lenin ruled out the 8^th, because though the Congress would already be in session, it would be unable to reach a sudden decision democratically. This left the 7^th (October 25, old style).

But of course Lenin was not even there….

Beginning of November – End of October, 1917: Bolshevik Agitation

With the decision of the Central Committee in favor of insurrection, but awaiting a favorable opportunity, the Bolsheviks redouble their agitation in the capital. Trotsky lists some of the principal speakers:

·         Sverdlov

·         Volodarsky

·         Lashevich

·         Kollontai

·         Chudnovsky

·         Lunacharsky

·         “scores of agitators of lesser caliber”

Lenin was regrettably missing from the list, still waiting in Finland. Zinoviev and Kamenev were missing too – but they had voted against the insurrection in the Central Committee, and worked against it since then. Neither does Trotsky find any evidence Stalin ever spoke at mass meetings during this time.

Of course Trotsky himself was the leading figure. Somewhat modestly referring to himself as “president of the Petrograd Soviet” instead of by name, Trotsky somewhat immodestly reproduces a passage from Sukhanov’s history saying that his influence “was overwhelming,” and that “every [Petrograd] worker and soldier knew him and heard him personally.” Returning to modesty, Trotsky points out that the person-to-person “molecular agitation” of the workers and soldiers was “incomparably more effective.”

October 28 – October 15, 1917: Reed’s Interviews at Smolny

The American journalist Reed interviews Kamenev and Volodarsky in the halls of Smolny Institute. They answered questions about the coming Congress of Soviets. Both of them spoke conditionally; neither was sure the Congress would actually take place.

Kamenev said that if it took place, the Congress would certainly represent the will of the masses, and probably have a Bolshevik majority. Of course, this was his preferred path for the transfer of power to the soviets.

Volodarsky said that the Compromisers were trying to see that the Congress did not come off. So the Bolsheviks “were realists enough not to depend on that!” But apparently he didn’t say, or Reed didn’t ask, what the Bolsheviks would do in such a case.

August 9 – July 27, 1917: Bolshevik Influence

Volodarsky reports to the Bolshevik Congress that the party has “colossal…unlimited influence” in the factories. As the power of the Central Executive Committee atrophied under the Compromisers, this was to become a valuable resource in the October Revolution.

This is a supplementary post. Follow the link to the next one in chronological order.