The Bolsheviks Carry a Resolution

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, a day after the Executive Committee of the (national) soviets conceded Prime Minister Kerensky’s plan for a directorate, that is, a narrower government concentrating more authority in himself, the Petrograd (local) soviet overwhelmingly approved a Bolshevik resolution calling for a government of the workers’ and peasants’ soviets.

 

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on the Democratic Conference here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Coalition Government

One hundred years ago today, plus three, some but not all of the socialist parties were invited, and were willing, to join the coalition government being formed after a couple bourgeois liberal Cadet ministers resigned from the provisional government. Alexander Kerensky, a Social Revolutionary, got promoted to the War Ministry. The Bolsheviks had opposed this compromise in the Executive Committee of the Soviet.

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on the coalition government here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

October 31 – October 18, 1917: Kamenev’s Trick

The Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet is again in session; with rumors flying about insurrection, the Bolsheviks have to give some sort of account of themselves. Trotsky spoke, admitting in the first place that he had signed an order for rifles that went to the Red Guard.

In the second place, he forged a link between the removal of the Petrograd garrison and the convocation of the Congress of Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet, he argued, would ask the Congress to seize the power; in the meantime, the Soviet would resist attempts, originating with the bourgeoisie, to break up the garrison – or for that matter the Congress. With the Garrison Conference and its countersign policy in place, the Soviet’s resistance had teeth.

Someone asked whether the Soviet had set a date for the insurrection. Trotsky replied that it had not, but that “if it became necessary to set one, the workers and soldiers would come out as one man.” Kamenev, sitting next to Trotsky, rose to make a comment that he “wanted to sign his name to Trotsky’s every word.” Of course this meant that he, Kamenev, did not think an insurrection would become necessary any time soon. But it was wrong to implicate Trotsky, and by extension the Bolshevik party, in that opinion. This episode was to have consequences.

Sukhanov’s motion to commemorate Gorky’s 50^th anniversary failed.

Trotsky relates an anecdote of Sukhanov’s observations after this session of the Executive Committee. First, Sukhanov says in his history, he saw Trotsky leave the meeting and approach the run-down, crowded automobiles the Central Executive Committee had made available to the Bolsheviks. After a moment, Trotsky “chuckled and…disappeared into the darkness” on foot. Then, boarding a passenger car, a smallish man with a goatee consoled Sukhanov on the discomforts of travel by rail. Sukhanov learned that the man’s name was Sverdlov, and that he was a “old party worker.” But he did not then know that Sverdlov and a quorum of the Bolshevik Central Committee had met in his apartments eight days before, nor could he know that in two weeks, Sverdlov would be President of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of All Russia.

Trotsky was apparently due at the All Russian Conference of Factory and Shop Committees that evening. There he spoke against “vacillation and wavering,” and everybody knew he was talking about Kamenev and Zinoviev. The conference also raised an issue that was being raised in Moscow factories and in the artillery factories. A resolution declaring worker control of production “in the interest of the whole country” passed with only five dissenting votes. Thus workers representing every Russian industry endorsed not just the theoretical validity of worker control but also their ability to manage the factories successfully, as in some cases they were already doing.

October 29 – October 16, 1917: The Garrison and the Executive Committee

Trotsky’s Executive Committee puts approval of the regulations of the Military Revolutionary Committee on the agenda of the Petrograd Soviet. Asked by the Mensheviks whether the Bolsheviks were preparing for a seizure of power, Trotsky said, “We make no secret of that.” The regulations were approved by a large majority. More and more left Social Revolutionaries were coming over to the Bolshevik program.

Yet the majority of the Bolshevik Military Organization was not confident in its operational readiness for insurrection, as Ensign Krylenko reported on this day. Another member of the organization, Lashevich, expressed similar doubts a couple of days later; Podvoisky joined in this opinion. Yet Uritsky, a member of the Central Committee and former Trotskyite, estimated the armed strength of the workers at 40,000 rifles. Lenin soon met with these leaders to stiffen their backs. 

That same day, General Polkovnikov again (and still quite incorrectly) reported that the garrison largely remained loyal to the government….

The Executive Committee also named representatives to the meeting General Cheremissov wanted. When they subsequently arrived at Pskov, they rebuffed the claim of the general and his staff that transfers from the garrison to the front were a strategic necessity. So much for another effort orchestrated by Kerensky to weaken the forces of the insurrection. 

October 8 – September 25, 1917: The Last Coalition and the New Soviet

Kerensky announces a new coalition government, destined to be the last one and consisting in large measure of substantial capitalists. The Cadet Konovalov was made Kerensky’s second in command, and given the portfolio for Commerce and Industry. Kerensky also recruited the president of the Moscow stock exchange and the president of the Moscow Military Industrial Committee to the cabinet. Tereshchenko, who drew his wealth from the sugar trade, remained as Foreign Minister. Several Mensheviks held portfolios, but none of them had been of any importance in the Petrograd Soviet. A Social Revolutionary was made Minister of Agriculture.

Kerensky also mended fences with the Entente, keeping their preferred ambassador to London and naming a new one, a Cadet, to Paris.

On the same day, the Petrograd Soviet elected Trotsky as its President. Then it named a new Executive Committee consisting of thirteen Bolsheviks, six Social Revolutionaries, and three Mensheviks. Trotsky introduced and passed a resolution calling on the coalition to resign: the soon to be convened All-Russian Congress of Soviets would “create a genuinely revolutionary government.”

Thus the Bolsheviks continued to be quite open about their claims on the state power. The step missing from Trotsky’s resolution, of course, is armed insurrection.

Trotsky also adduces evidence about the deterioration of Kerensky’s mental condition during this time. Miliukov, for example, called it “psychic neurasthenia.” He later wrote that Kerensky’s friends had observed him pass from “extreme failure of energy” to “extreme excitement under the influence of drugs” during the course of a day. Kerensky was under the treatment of his own Minister of Public Welfare, Kishkin, professionally a psychiatrist, politically a Cadet.

September 12 – August 30, 1917: The Insurrection Collapses

The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announces the “complete demoralization” of the forces in Kornilov’s insurrection. General Krymov presented himself to Kerensky at the Winter Palace and was treated to a theatrical speech. He shot himself dead on the way back to the war office.

General Krasnov, the commander of Kornilov’s cavalry advance, saw the same thing other Kornilovist officers had been seeing: animated agitators among his troops. These particular troops began to arrest their officers and put themselves under soldiers committees they themselves had elected. Going further, they formed a soviet and sent a delegation to the Provisional Government.

The Kronstadt sailors were also making their views felt. They sent a delegation to the Central Executive demanding representation there, but had to be satisfied with four non-voting seats.

The Bolsheviks in Finland went even further, assuming governmental functions that, Trotsky says, anticipated the October Revolution itself.

Meanwhile Kerensky dismissed Governor-general Savinkov and replaced him with another individual, who himself was dismissed three days later.

Overnight, September 9-10 – August 27-28, 1917: A Proposal from the Soviet

The joint Central Executive Committee of the Soviets debates its response to the situation created by General Kornilov’s insurrection well into the morning hours. After midnight, the Soviet got word that Kerensky would not agree to democratic reforms. He insisted on the notion of a directory, that is, a reconcentration of power in a smaller cabinet with himself at the head.

Tseretilli nevertheless went from the Smolny Institute to the Winter Palace to submit the Soviet’s proposal. When Kerensky refused it, he returned to Smolny, arriving at about 7:30 a.m. on the 28^th (September 10, new style). Wearied, the Soviet was ready to concede Kerensky’s plan for a directory.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Manifestation

By 7:00 p.m., the main street on the Vyborg side of the river was packed with demonstrators. The Machine Gun regiment took the lead, followed by the workers, with the Moscow regiment bringing up the rear. As these marchers were the militants, not the mere sympathizers, Trotsky says, they did not reach the numbers of the June Demonstration. But as many as 500,000 workers and soldiers may have participated, including all or part of seven other regiments of the garrison.

The Bolshevik headquarters was the first stop. There Nevsky and others again urged the soldiers and Red Guards to go home, again without success. Seeing the policy of restraint had been a failure, party leaders on the scene, including members of the Central Committee, decided instead to, Trotsky says, “guide the developing movement” along peaceful and politically advantageous lines.

Hearing the decision, the marchers sang the Marseillaise. The party prepared a list of demands for submission to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets at the Tauride Palace, next and final stop on the march. Some of the machine gunners crossed the canal to the Peter and Paul fortress, in the river opposite Bolshevik headquarters, intending to bring the garrison and its artillery over to the side of the demonstrators.

The principal demand adopted by the marchers and now articulated by the Bolsheviks was for the Central Executive to end the dual government by taking power into its own hands: All Power to the Soviets! The sequel proved ironic.

July 16 – July 3, 1917: July Days: The Central Executive Committee

As the banners of the marchers in Nevsky Prospect approach the Tauride Palace, meetings of the two sections of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets are already in session.

The committee had had news of the Machine Gun regiment’s plans earlier in the day. Kamenev and the other Bolsheviks present offered to go to the regiment and ask for restraint. But the Central Executive preferred to issue a proclamation declaring demonstrations to be treachery to the revolution. Meanwhile Tseretilli gave the joint session his ideas for addressing the cabinet crisis brought on by the resignation of the Cadet ministers the day before.

Realizing a proclamation might not be enough to stop the what they were calling the “insurrection,” the Compromisers (i.e., Trotsky’s name for those in the Soviet who sought accommodation with the Provisional Government and by extension the bourgeoisie) cast about for the armed protection of troops. Not finding any of the garrison who were then willing to take their side, they sent to the Fifth Army, nearest Petrograd at the front. By evening, scarcely a hundred had been found by the Menshevik assigned this task. Trotsky remarks more than once on the irony of this effort: The Soviet answering the demonstrators’ demand that it seize the power, by recruiting troops to suppress the demonstrators rather than the Provisional Government.

The workers’ and soldiers’ section of the Central Executive had gone back into session. Recent elections had given the Bolsheviks a majority in that section, or so the right-socialists feared. Zinoviev was giving a speech against the Compromisers when the marchers reached the palace. In response, Kamenev proposed selecting a commission of 25 members to lead the demonstration; Trotsky seconded. Seeing the tendency of the debate that followed, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries walked out of the meeting. The Bolsheviks and Trotskyites who remained passed a resolution calling on the Central Executive to take power, and named fifteen members to the leadership committee, leaving ten places open in case the right-socialists should have second thoughts.

Meanwhile, Cheidze, Menshevik president of the Soviet, confronted the crowd outside the palace. When he faltered, Voitinsky took his place, but was also met with silence. Trotsky fared better when his turn came, but he stopped short of advocating insurrection (as his enemies were later to claim).

Events did not stop unfolding at midnight.