Revolutionaries unfurl the red flag in Moscow in 1918. © BETTMANN/CORBIS Bolshevik leaders holding this views included Lenin and Trotsky who, having successfully engineered the overthrow of the Provisional Government before the start of the Congress of Soviets, were now most concerned to retain complete freedom of action at virtually any price. Most departing delegates also believed that the new government would in any case yield its authority to the Constituent Assembly, scheduled to be elected at the end of November.
Among political parties seeking to restore a broad socialist alliance and to restructure the Sov-narkom in the immediate aftermath of the Second Congress, most prominent were the Menshevik-Internationalists and the Left SRs; the latter were especially important to the success of the revolution because of their growing strength among peasants in the countryside, where Bolshevik influence was critically weak. Among labor organizations seeking to play a similar role was the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railway Workers (Vikzhel). Vikzhel announced that it would declare an immediate nationwide rail stoppage if the Bolsheviks did not participate in negotiations to create a homogeneous socialist government responsible to the soviets and including all socialist groups.
Under Vikzhel’s aegis, intensive talks were held in Petrograd November 11-18 (October 29- November 5 O.S.). With Kamenev in charge of negotiations for the Bolsheviks, they began auspiciously. Indeed, on November 2 even the Bolshevik press reported that the discussions were on the verge of success. However, they ultimately foundered, primarily because of such factors as the impossibly high demands made by the moderate socialists (essentially requiring repudiation of Soviet power and most of the accomplishments of the Second Congress, as well as the exclusion of Lenin and Trotsky from any future government), the defeat by Soviet forces of an internal insurrection and of loyalist Cossack units outside Petrograd, and the consolidation of Soviet power in Moscow. These factors immeasurably strengthened Lenin’s and Trotsky’s hands, enabling them to torpedo the Vikzhel talks. During the run-up to the Constituent Assembly in December, Bolshevik moderates made a valiant bid to steer the party’s delegation toward
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support of its right to define Russia’s future political system. However, by then the moderates had been squeezed out of the party leadership, and this effort also failed. All of this made a long and bitter civil war inevitable.
The October Revolution cannot be adequately characterized as either a military coup d’?tat or a popular uprising (although it contained elements of both). Its roots are to be found in the peculiarities of prerevolutionary Russia’s political, social, and economic development, as well as in Russia’s wartime crisis. At one level, it was the culminating event in a drawn-out battle between leftists and moderates: on the one hand, an expanding spectrum of left socialist groups supported by the vast majority of Petrograd workers, soldiers, and sailors dissatisfied by the results of the February revolution; and on the other, the increasingly isolated liberal-moderate socialist alliance that had taken control of the Provisional Government and national Soviet leadership during the February days. By the time the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened on November 7 (October 25 O.S.), the relatively peaceful victory of the former was all but assured. At another level, the October Revolution was a struggle, initially primarily within the Bolshevik leadership, between proponents of a multiparty, exclusively socialist government that would lead Russia to a Constituent Assembly in which socialists would have a dominating voice, and Leninists, who ultimately favored violent revolutionary action as the best means of striking out on an ultra-radical, independent revolutionary course in Russia and triggering decisive socialist revolutions abroad.
Muted for much of 1917, this conflict erupted with greatest force in the wake of the February Revolution, in the immediate aftermath of the July uprising, and during the periods immediately preceding and following the October Revolution. Such factors as the walkout of Mensheviks and SRs from the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, prompted by the belated military operations pressed by Lenin and precipitated by Kerensky; the adoption of the Bolshevik program at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets; the intransigence of the moderate socialists at the Vikzhel talks; and the Bolsheviks’ first military victories over loyalist forces decisively undermined the efforts of moderate Bolsheviks to achieve a multiparty, socialist democracy and facilitated the rapid ascendancy of Leninist authoritarianism. In this sense, the October Revolution extinguished prospects for the development of a Western- style democracy in Russia for the better part of a century. Also, in the immediate post-revolutionary years, it led to the catastrophic Russian civil war. Finally, it laid the foundation for Stalinism and the Cold War. However, despite these outcomes, the October revolution was in large measure a valid expression of popular aspirations. See also: BOLSHEVISM; CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; JULY DAYS; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; REVOLUTION OF 1905; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Acton, Edward. (1990). Rethinking the Russian Revolution. London: Edward Arnold. Acton, Edward; Cherniaev,Vladimir Iu.; and Rosenberg, William G., eds. (1997). Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914 -1921. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melgunov, S. P. (1972). Bolshevik Seizure of Power, tr. James S. Beaver. Santa Barbara, CA: Clio. Pipes, Richard. (1990). The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf. Rabinowitch, Alexander. (1976). The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. New York: Norton. Raleigh, Donald J. (1986). Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bone, Ann, tr. (1974). The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) August 1917-February 1918. London: Pluto Press. Sukhanov, N. N. (1962). The Russian Revolution, 1917, tr. and ed. Joel Carmichael. New York: Harper. Wildman, Allan. (1987). The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Vol. 2: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ALEXANDER RABINOWITCH
The Octobrist Party was founded in 1906 by Russian moderate liberals, taking its name from the October Manifesto. Unequivocal support for the new constitutional system and rejection of compulsory
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land expropriation except in extreme state need distinguished it from the major left party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets), which represented more radical liberal opinion.
In the elections to the First and Second Dumas (1906-1907), the Octobrist Party fared relatively poorly while parties to its left had strong showings. The government, finding itself unable to work with the first two Dumas, dissolved them. Alexander Guchkov, the Octobrists’ first leader, during the Second Duma softened some of the party’s positions, thus enabling cooperation with the government. Loyalty to the new constitutional system and willingness to work with the government to achieve its full implementation and accompanying social reform were now the broad guiding principles of the party. Dissolving the Second Duma, Peter Stolypin, chairman of the Council of Ministers (1906-1911), restricted the voting franchise which lessened the voting power of the peasants and working classes. His goal was to limit the number of radical left deputies and increase Octobrist Party representation so that it could provide a solid base of support for the government in the Duma. Stolypin found himself in a difficult position in the Duma, stuck between the right with its hatred for the new system and the radical left. In the 1907 elections to the Third Duma the Octobrist Party more than tripled its representation, receiving 153 seats.
The party’s unity and its relationship with the government depended on the latter’s dedication to the spirit of the constitutional system and policy of reform. The great increase in the party’s numbers made maintenance of unity between its left and right wings problematic.
Initially the Stolypin-Octobrist alliance worked relatively well, especially in regard to peasant reform. However, by 1909 conservatives fearful of the institutionalization of the new system by the Stolypin-Octobrist partnership worked to break it. The Naval General Staff crisis was the first step in this direction. The Octobrists regarded Nicholas II’s rejection, with the urging of conservatives, of a bill concerning the Naval General Staff that had already been passed by both houses of parliament, as a violation of the spirit of the October Manifesto.
