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.

Overnight November 8-9 – October 26-27, 1917: Decree on Land

Lenin again takes the stand at the Congress of Soviets, bringing another proclamation, this one for resolving the long-festering agrarian question. The Social Revolutionaries had dominated the peasants soviets since the February Revolution. When they were drawn into the coalition governments with the bourgeois parties representing, among others, large landowners, they found it impossible to implement the policies their peasant constituency wanted. So they, and in particular Kerensky and his Ministers of Agriculture, had no answer to the agrarian question.

The Bolsheviks now gave the answer – essentially the same one given in Lenin’s April Theses. Lenin held the only draft; it had not been possible to reproduce it for distribution. It was also apparently written in another hand. He stumbled as he read it, and had to stop for a moment. Someone on the dais, maybe the person who wrote it, offered to help and read the proclamation through.

The proclamation, Trotsky says, “smashes the Gordian knot with a hammer”:

·         Landlord property, including that of the crown, the churches, and the monasteries, annulled without compensation

·         Confiscated lands, including livestock and implements, to be held as national property

·         This property to be administered, and the use of it distributed, by the local peasants soviets and land committees

·         The lands of the small peasants and Cossacks serving in the army not subject to confiscation

The Social Revolutionaries had managed to draft and publish, in the peasants’ Izvestia on August 19 (September 1, new style), a set of guidelines for the redistribution of land. It remained a dead letter until now, when the Bolsheviks appended it to the proclamation as instructions for carrying the latter out. Find the text of the Decree on Land here.

Note that the proclamation recognizes private property in the lands of small holders, and permits the soviets and land committees to redistribute confiscated land roughly equally into private parcels. Rosa Luxemburg had remarked that this is not socialism. But Lenin in the war on capital, like Lincoln in the war against slavery, knew when to take a step and how far the step ought to go. The peasants were already in revolt. The Decree on Land bound them to the workers just as the Decree on Peace had bound the soldiers.

Lenin then made a few points in support of the proclamation. Before the applause died down, a right Social Revolutionary representing the Executive Committee of the Peasants Soviets pushed forward and angrily renewed the demand for the release of the socialist ministers – including, a little ironically, the Minister of Agriculture.

Trotsky answered that the compomisist Central Executive Committee had already furnished a precedent for house arrest: when Kollontai was released from prison under doctor’s orders, her house was guarded by police formerly employed under the tsar. A peasant delegate from Tver, “with long hair and a big sheepskin coat,” says Trotsky, got up from his seat, made his bows, and invited the praesidium to arrest the Executive Committee of the Peasants Soviets instead. “’Those are not peasants’ deputies, but Cadets…. Their place is in prison.’” This met with vocal approval from the Congress, and the first speaker beat his retreat.

Some of the left Social Revolutionaries wanted to caucus before giving their votes. One of the furthest left of them called for an immediate vote instead. Lenin, wanting the proclamation to make the morning papers, nevertheless permitted a short intermission: “’No filibustering!” he said.

After this interim, which lasted two and half hours, until 1:00 a.m. October 26 (November 8, new style) instead of the allotted thirty minutes, the Congress received reports of the adherence to the Military Revolutionary Committee of units from Macedonia to the outskirts of Petrograd – another bicycle battalion sent there by the government. They heard, Reed says, announcements asking for agitators to go to the front. They passed, “unanimously and without debate,” a resolution advising the local soviets, on their honor, to prevent pogroms against the Jews or any other national or ethnic group.

Now, at about 2:00 a.m., Kamenev called the vote: the whole Congress, less one vote and eight abstentions, supported the decree, and, says Trotsky, ”…therewith the revolution of the proletariat acquires a mighty basis.”

Reed says a soldier-delegate rose to make a special plea: land for deserters? This was ruled out by the Social Revolutionaries’ guidelines. But was it fair? Over shouted objections, the speaker won the ears of the Congress. Some deserters were shirkers or cowards, others were brutalized, starved, and in despair. Kamenev, having one final item on his agenda, proposed to reserve the matter to the government for decision.

September 21 – September 8, 1917: Peasant Revolt

The Provisional Government not having addressed the agrarian question, peasants of Tombov province burn landlord manors – a sign that their revolt was escalating. It’s not possible to give a chronological account of these widespread, often spontaneous actions. This particular action, however, went beyond the usual takings of harvests, firewood, farm animals, and implements. Others like it, not excluding murders, continued to occur as the October Revolution approached.

Meanwhile in Petrograd, the soldiers’ section of the soviet adopted a resolution demanding the return of the garrison units that had been transferred after the July Days.

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

October 23 – October 10, 1917: The Vote for Insurrection

At the apartment of the Menshevik Sukhanov, his wife, a Bolshevik, receives a quorum of her party’s Central Committee. Twelve of the twenty-one members attended, including Lenin, disguised with a wig and spectacles, and shorn of his characteristic beard. The meeting lasted ten hours; Sukhanov’s wife served her guests bread, sausage, and tea “for reinforcement,” Trotsky says.

Sukhanov’s wife had encouraged him not to tire himself by the trip home from Smolny that evening. But one wonders if he missed the sausages or the household funds required to procure them.

Sverdlov opened the meeting in the usual way with a report on organization. He focused, apparently by previous arrangement with Lenin, on suspicious activities at the front, including an effort to surround the revolutionary garrison at Minsk with Cossack cavalry, and communication between the headquarters of the Minsk garrison and the general staff.

With that Lenin began to marshal his arguments. He spoke earnestly and extemporaneously; it was time to put an end to the waverings on the committee. The question came to a vote sooner than Lenin might have expected: ten to two in favor of insurrection. For the balance of the ten-hour meeting, one after another, the members favoring insurrection tried unsuccessfully to persuade the dissenters, Kamenev and Zinoviev, to change their minds.  

The resolution itself summarizes, somewhat elliptically, the arguments Lenin used and the committee accepted. Lenin wrote it out, Trotsky says, with the “gnawed end of a pencil” on a child’s notebook paper. The reasons given for immediate action begin, in Lenin’s preferred order of precedence, with the international situation:

·         Perceived progress in the “world-wide socialist revolution” combined with imperialist threats to its leading edge, the Russian Revolution

·         Kerensky’s machinations to abandon the military stronghold of the revolution, Petrograd, to the Germans

·         The scale and intensity of the peasant revolt

·         Bolshevik majorities in elections to the soviets, etc.

·         Counter-revolutionary preparations, including renewed efforts to break up the Petrograd garrison

Lenin might have added another argument he’d used before, that the people might lose confidence in the Bolsheviks just as they had in the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and sink back into indifference and despair. At any rate, the resolution says, “…all this places the armed insurrection on the order of the day.” Note that the resolution did not set a specific date for the insurrection. Trotsky recalled that Lenin wanted Kerensky to be deposed before the Congress of Soviets was to assemble, and so October 15^th (October 28, new style) was discussed and tentatively set.

The resolution concludes by putting the onus of action on the party, specifically for organizing the Northern Regional Conference of Soviets and for resisting the break-up of the Petrograd garrison.

Reed recounts a different story about how the vote was taken, one that has verisimilitude but not verity. He says the vote was taken twice, at first going against insurrection. Then a “rough workman” arose and warned the committee not to allow the destruction of the soviets. If they did, “we’re through with you!” Then another vote favorable to insurrection supposedly took place. Of course the public were not invited to this secret session of the Central Committee. But the rumor Reed picked up epitomizes the ripeness of the crisis, and the risk that the people were growing, again in the words of the committee, “tired of words and resolutions.”

The seven-member political bureau selected by the committee at this meeting, because it included Zinoviev and Kamenev and because they immediately tried to stir up opposition to the resolution, was still-born – it never met.

The Bolsheviks also took a decision to publish a paper, Beydnoth, addressed to the peasantry. Though the Social Revolutionaries were the strongest vote getters in rural areas, Lenin saw an opportunity to bring the peasants over to the party once the workers’ insurrection caught up with the peasant revolt.

Besides this, Trotsky gave a speech to a conference of Petrograd factory committees that day, calling for the workers to “break through [the] wall” between them and the peasants. On Trotsky’s motion, the conference created the “Worker to Peasant” program, under which workers would fabricate farm implements from the waste and scrap metal of the factories and distribute them in the provinces. But this was not the real solution to the peasants’ problem; the effort was primarily a form of agitation. The problem could only be addressed directly when the workers controlled the means of production.

Meanwhile, now that the harvest was passing, the peasant revolt was growing.

October 20 – October 7, 1917: “The Crisis is Ripe”

Lenin publishes “The Crisis Is Ripe” in Rabochy Put on this day. Lenin’s articles had been anticipating the vote of the Central Committee on insurrection for some weeks. This particular article, among other things, draws a connection between the call for insurrection and both the agrarian and nationalities questions.

The Bolshevik policy on the agrarian question dated back to Lenin’s April Theses. As against the failure of either the Provisional Government or the Compromisers to act, he argued, it remains the correct policy for joining the workers’ insurrection to the on-going peasant revolt.

The importance of the nationalities question to the timing of the insurrection, Lenin also argued, is illustrated by the vote of their delegates in the Democratic Conference. The nationalities were second only to the labor unions in voting against coalition at the conference.

But these questions were secondary in Lenin’s mind to the question of the “world working-class revolution.” Trotsky says this had always been Lenin’s point of departure. Even though capitalism in Russia lagged behind Europe and America, the crisis had come in Russia first. The ripeness of the crisis meant precisely that the Russian insurrection should not be held back, lest the opportunity pass forever and for workers everywhere.

In Lenin’s opinion this meant not waiting for the Congress of Soviets, still two weeks off. He thought the forces in Finland, where the soviets and the Baltic Fleet were already in a state equivalent to insurrection, would be a sufficient reinforcement for those already in Petrograd and Moscow. Moreover, his doubts about parliamentary struggle and the ability of such institutions to bring about world proletarian revolution applied not only to the Pre-Parliament, but to the Congress of Soviets as well.

And then, to emphasize his point (in a portion of the letter not intended for publication), Lenin resigned from the Central Committee. Trotsky believes he can explain this action. Bolshevik party discipline called for members to accept and support the democratically decided line of the party. As a member of the Central Committee, Lenin was already approaching the limit set by this rule. If he resigned, perhaps, he would be freer to advocate what he thought was the correct line on insurrection. It was another instance of the masses being to the left of the party.

But the resignation was not accepted and nothing more came of it. Meanwhile Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, travelled to the party’s district meetings and read this and his other letters to the rank and file.

October 9-10 – September 26-27, 1917: September Theses

Lenin publishes “Tasks of the Revolution,“ a kind of September version of the April Theses, in Rabochy Put. There are seven tasks; though some of them address issues already addressed in the April Theses, they all take account of developments in the interim.

The first two tasks lead to forming the new revolutionary state: all power must pass to the workers, soldiers and peasants through their representatives in the soviets; no compromise with the bourgeoisie or their political apparatus is possible.

The third reiterates the party’s war policy against indemnities, annexation, and defensism. Lenin lays out specific actions against contingencies during the lead up to, and after, the insurrection.

The agrarian policy of the Bolsheviks does not change, but acquires new force in light of the inaction of the Compromisers and the peasant revolt.

The fifth task recognizes that the progress of the revolution and the soviets has given the workers more ability to control the means of production. Therefore this, not as in April just the development of the soviets, becomes the task.

The last two tasks offer measures for combating the counter-revolution, something that had already been done successfully once with the defeat of Kornilov.

On the 10^th (September 27, new style), Lenin, still anxious about putting off the insurrection until the Congress of Soviets could be convened some two weeks thence, wrote to Smilga, the President of the Finnish Regional Committee and a member of the Central Committee. Lenin let Smilga know that the revolutionary troops in Finland and the Baltic Fleet might be called upon to advance on Petrograd. He asked Smilga do to a number of other things, both in the political open and underground. One, interestingly, was to prepare identification papers for him in the name of Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov. That’s how he signed the letter.

July 25 – July 12, 1917: Decrees of the Provisional Government

The right- and left-leaning factions in the Provisional Government both gain legislative victories on this day. To please his generals, Kerensky put through a decree restoring the death penalty at the front. The left, still fumbling to formulate an agrarian policy, managed to put through a half-hearted measure limiting the sales of land. It pleased no-one.

Kerensky also removed General Polotsev from command of the Petrograd garrison at about this time, giving one explanation to the left in the Provisional Government and another to his friends on the right.

July 14 – July 1, 1917: Mensheviks Heckled

At a meeting of the Grenadier Guards regiment, the soldiers heckle Menshevik speakers and arrest the president of the regimental committee.

Meanwhile the All-Russian Congress of Landed Proprietors convened in Moscow, signaling renewed resistance among aristocratic and other large landowners to the Coalition Government’s (feeble) attempts at land reform, and to attempts by the peasantry to take matters into their own hands.

July 13 – June 30, 1917: Zemsky Nachalniks

The Coalition Government dismisses the zemsky nachalniks, officials over the agricultural villages drawn from petit bourgeois landowners. Since Alexander III had created the office in the late 19^th century, they had exercised administrative and judicial powers over the peasantry to the exclusion of local councils and even the aristocracy.

The zemsky nachalniks were feared and despised by the peasantry. But Trotsky views the government’s action as a “belated partial reform”; it was certainly no substitute for a genuine agrarian policy.

June 25 – June 12, 1917: Compromise on the Left

Despite the Menshevik Tseretilli’s inflammatory speech, and another by his colleague Dan suggesting the Bolsheviks had connections with German agents, the Congress of Soviets as a whole is not ready to expel the Bolsheviks from the revolution’s ranks. A compromise developed in which the Bolsheviks gave up the call for a demonstration, and the other left parties in the soviets gave up the call to disarm the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were subjected to what Trotsky calls an “exceptional law,” but the law had no teeth: no arrests, proscriptions, impeachments, etc.

Trotsky denies it was the policy of the party to arm itself. It happened that workers who identified with the party kept arms to defend themselves from the police, and that soldiers who bore arms in the line of duty might also consider themselves Bolsheviks. These elements were, in fact, the main protection of the movement during the February Revolution.

Another line of criticism then offered proved difficult for the Bolsheviks to lay to rest. It held that the Bolsheviks were the party of the workers, but not of the peasants. But the revolution was the revolution of the workers and the peasants. This overlooked the fact that the party’s agrarian policy was one of Lenin’s April Theses, and had been fully articulated in his speech to the Conference of Peasant Deputies. The Bolsheviks were actively agitating among the peasantry in favor of this policy.  

Finally at this session of the Congress, a Menshevik offered a resolution calling for a demonstration the following Sunday, June 18 (July 1, new style), to show unity against the German enemy. This passed, as did a resolution to abolish the State Duma and convene the Constituent Assembly on September 30 (October 13, new style). The Congress also agreed to reconvene every three months.

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.

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.

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.

A supplementary post follows this one in the chronological order.

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 convenes.

May 12 – April 29, 1917: All Russia Bolshevik Party Conference Ends

Besides the resolutions described in prior entries, the conference considered reports and resolutions on the party’s attitude toward the provincial soviets, revisions to its program, the agrarian and nationalities questions, and the current situation of the international proletarian revolution. Stalin delivered the report on the nationalities question. The tsars had made Russia the overlord of numerous peoples; Stalin was becoming the party’s expert on the issues this raised.

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 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.