or Kadet Party, Russia’s main liberal party, officially proclaimed a moratorium on opposition to the monarchy and pledged its unqualified support for the war effort. Beginning in early 1915, when the government’s extraordinary incompetence became fully apparent, the Kadets, despite their anguish, made use of the Duma only to call for the appointment of qualified ministers (rather than demand fundamental structural change). With good reason, they calculated that a political upheaval in the existing circumstances would be equally damaging to the war effort and prospects for the eventual creation of a liberal, democratic government. Members of the populist Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party and the moderate social democratic Menshevik Party were split between “defensists,” who supported the war effort, and “internationalists,” who sought an immediate cessation of hostilities and a compromise peace without victors or vanquished. Only Lenin advocated the fomenting of immediate social revolution in all of the warring countries; however, for the time being, efforts by underground Bolshevik committees in Russia to kindle popular opposition to the war failed.
The February 1917 Revolution, which grew out of prewar instabilities and technological backwardness, along with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy, resulted in the creation of two potential Russian national governments. One was the Provisional Government formed by members of the Duma to restore order and to provide leadership pending convocation of a popularly elected Constituent Assembly based on the French model. The Constituent Assembly was to design Russia’s future political system and take responsibility for the promulgation of other fundamental reforms. The second potential national government was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and its moderate socialist-led Executive Committee. Patterned after similar “worker parliaments” formed during the Revolution of 1905, in succeeding weeks similar institutions of popular self-government were established throughout urban and rural Russia. In early summer 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the First All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Deputies formed leadership bodies, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the All-Russian Executive Committee of Peasants’ Deputies, to represent soviets around the country between national congresses. Until the fall of 1917, when it was taken over by the Bolsheviks, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet strived to maintain order and protect the revolution until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. This was also true of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the All-Russian Executive Committee of Peasants’ Deputies. The Soviet, led by the moderate socialists, made no effort to take formal power into its own hands, although it was potentially stronger than the Provisional Government because of its vastly greater support among workers, peasants, and lower-level military personnel. This support skyrocketed in tandem with popular disenchantment with the economic results of the February Revolution, the effort of the Provisional Government to continue the war effort, and its procrastination in convening the Constituent Assembly. “ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!” At the time of the February Revolution, Lenin was in Switzerland. He returned to Petrograd in early April 1917, demanding an immediate second, “socialist” revolution in Russia. Although he backed off this goal after he acquainted himself with the realities of the prevailing situation (including little support for precipitous, radical revolutionary action even among Bolsheviks), his great achievement at this time was to orient the thinking of the Bolshevik Party toward preparation for the replacement of the Provisional Government by a leftist “Soviet” government as soon as the time was ripe. Nonetheless, in assessing Lenin’s role in the October Revolution, it is important to keep in mind that he was either away from the country or in hiding and out of regular touch with his colleagues in Russia for much of the time between February and October 1917. In any case, top Bolshevik leaders tended to be divided into three distinct groups: Lenin and Leon Trotsky, among others, for whom the establishment of revolutionary soviet power in Russia was less an end in itself than the trigger for immediate worldwide socialist revolution; a highly influential group of more moderate national party leaders led by Lev Kamenev for whom transfer of power to the soviets was primarily a vehicle for building a strong alliance of left socialist groups which would form a socialist coalition government to prepare for fundamental social reform and peace negotiations by a socialist-friendly Constituent Assembly; and a middle group of independent-minded
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leaders whose views on the development of the revolution fluctuated in response to their reading of existing conditions.
Then too, events often moved so rapidly that the Bolshevik Central Committee had to develop policies without consulting Lenin. Beyond this, circumstances were frequently such that structurally subordinate party bodies had perforce to develop responses to evolving realities without guidance or contrary to directives from the center. Also, in 1917 the doors to membership were opened wide, and the Bolshevik organization became a genuine mass political party. In part as a result of such factors, Bolshevik programs and policies in 1917 tended to be developed democratically, with strong inputs from rank-and-file members, and therefore reflected popular aspirations.
Meanwhile, the revolution among factory workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants had a dynamic of its own. At times, the Bolsheviks followed the masses rather than vice versa. For example, on July 14 (July 1 O.S.) the Bolshevik Central Committee, influenced by party moderates, began preparing for a left-socialist congress aimed at unifying all internationalist elements of the “Social Democracy” (e.g., Menshevik-Internationalists and Left SRs) in support of common revolutionary goals. Yet only two days later, radical elements of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee and Party Military Organization (responsive to their ultra-militant constituencies) helped organize the abortive July uprising, against the wishes of Lenin and the Central Committee, who considered such action premature.
The July uprising ended in an apparent defeat for the Bolsheviks. Lenin was forced into hiding, numerous Bolshevik leaders were jailed, and efforts to form a united left-socialist front were temporarily ended. Still, in light of the success of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, perhaps the main significance of the July uprising was that it reflected the great popular attraction for the Bolshevik revolutionary program, as well as the party’s strong links to Petrograd’s lower classes, links that would prove valuable over the long term.
What was the Bolsheviks’ program? Contrary to conventional wisdom, in 1917 the Bolsheviks did not stand for a one-party dictatorship (neither in July nor at any time before the October Revolution). Rather, they stood for democratic “people’s power,” exercised through an exclusively socialist, soviet, multiparty government, pending convocation of the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks also stood for more land to individual peasants, “workers’ control” in factories, prompt improvement of food supply, and, most important, an early end to the war. All of these goals were neatly packaged in the slogans “Peace, Land, and Bread!” “All Power to the Soviets!” and “Immediate Convocation of the Constituent Assembly!” The interplay and political value of these two key factors-the attractiveness of the Bolshevik platform and the party’s carefully nurtured links to revolutionary workers, soldiers, and sailors-were evident in the fall of 1917, after the left’s quick defeat of an unsuccessful rightist putsch led by the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov (the so-called Kornilov affair).
THE BOLSHEVIKS COME TO POWER
Following the ill-fated July uprising, Lenin, alienated by moderate socialist attacks on the Bolsheviks and by their support of the Provisional Government and dismissive of the soviets’ revolutionary potential, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the party leadership to abandon its emphasis on transfer of power to the soviets and shift its strategy to a unilateral seizure of power. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Kornilov affair, during which Lenin remained in hiding, he briefly reconsidered this position and allowed for a peaceful transition to soviet power. However, this moderation was fleeting. Isolated from day-to-day developments and decision making in the Russian capital, and evidently influenced primarily by clear signs of deepening social unrest at home and abroad, at the end of September (mid-September O.S.) Lenin decided that the time had come for another revolution in Russia: a socialist revolution that would serve as the catalyst for popular rebellions in other European countries. In two emphatic letters to Bolshevik committees in Petrograd written from a hideout in Finland, he now demanded that the party organize an armed uprising “without losing a single moment.”
These letters were received in Petrograd at a time when prospects for peaceful creation of an exclusively socialist government suddenly brightened. After passage by the Petrograd Soviet of a momentous Bolshevik resolution to this effect proposed by Kamenev, the Bolsheviks won majority control of that key body. Trotsky became its chairman. Around the same time, the Bolsheviks also gained control of the Moscow Soviet. Moreover, the Bolshevik leadership was just then focused on trying
