Spies and Commissars

Petrograd felt relieved. It seemed to them that the new government stood a realistic chance of restoring order to Russia and keeping its armed forces active on the eastern front.

The Bolsheviks had joined in the protest but they had also called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and inception of a socialist order. Until Lenin’s return to Russia there had been confusion among them. The Bolshevik leaders in the capital who had survived the arrests in the previous winter favoured the kind of radical extremism that Lenin advocated from far-off Switzerland. The Russian Bureau of the Bolsheviks took seriously its old factional doctrine about the desirability of a socialist dictatorship. The Bureau was headed by Vyacheslav Molotov, then only twenty-seven years old. Molotov called for unconditional struggle against the Provisional Government. The moment for Bolsheviks to prevent the liberals from achieving power had already passed, but Molotov believed that Bolshevism required that he and his comrades should seek to reverse the outcome. This remained the official policy of the Russian Bureau until the arrival of senior figures such as Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin from Siberian exile. The Bolshevik Central Committee fell into their hands as they insisted on a policy of conditional support for the Provisional Government. But there were many Bolsheviks in Petrograd and the provinces who thought Molotov had been right, and it was not difficult for Lenin to persuade the faction to sanction the revolutionary course he had proposed in his ‘April Theses’.⁴

Bolshevik militants stood against Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, whom Lenin denounced as ‘social-traitors’, in elections to the soviets, trade unions and factory-workshop committees. Their party newspaper, Pravda, predicted that conditions for working people would not improve until a socialist revolution had occurred. They adopted slogans of Peace, Bread and Land and promised national self-determination to the non-Russians. They demanded the installation of a government based on the soviets, and declared that the era of socialism was at hand throughout Europe. Lenin and his comrades contended that Lvov’s cabinet was a capitalist government motivated by militarist and imperialist objectives. Only a minority of workers and soldiers as yet accepted this, and hardly any peasants had heard of Bolshevism; but the drip-drip effect of Bolshevik propaganda was noticeable. Covertly helped by funds from the German government, which was willing to finance any organization that would pull Russia out of the war, the party expanded its printing facilities and grew in size as tens of thousands of people signed up for membership. Lenin himself attracted massive attention as the champion of the antigovernmental cause and Trotsky and other left-wing Marxists joined the Bolsheviks as the likeliest instrument of revolutionary socialism in Russia. The Provisional Government was put on notice that it could take nothing for granted.

Lvov now presided over a divided cabinet. Socialist ministers undertook reforms in industrial relations; they also permitted peasants to cultivate land left unsown by gentry landlords. The liberals in the cabinet, led by the Constitutional-Democrats (usually known as Kadets), worried that socialism was being installed by stealth. They wanted to resume military operations on the eastern front, which was in fact agreed by Alexander Kerenski in his new post as Minister for Military Affairs. Inside the cabinet, however, the debate continued. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were pushing for a more active search for peace, and ministers duly sanctioned Russian involvement in an international socialist conference in Stockholm where this would be the core of the agenda. But at the same time Kerenski was laying plans for an offensive against the Austro-Hungarian forces on the southern sector of the front.

This display of commitment delighted the Allies. It did not displease Lenin and Trotsky, who said it proved that the coalition was as aggressive as they had always contended. The Bolsheviks exploited the popular unease by calling for an armed demonstration in Petrograd against government policy. This was set to coincide with the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets in mid-June. Suspecting that the Bolsheviks were plotting to overthrow the Lvov cabinet, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries decided to organize their own unarmed demonstration through the centre of the city. They dominated the Congress of Soviets; but when they asserted that no single party wished to take power in Russia, Lenin shouted from the floor: ‘There is such a party!’ The Bolshevik Central Committee, confident that its fortunes were improving, organized a yet further demonstration. The Kronstadt naval garrison — a hotbed of anticabinet feelings — promised to sail over to the capital and bring their rifles. Lenin chose this moment to take a few days’ holiday in the countryside. This was an artificial display of nonchalance. Anatoli Lunacharski, one of Trotsky’s sympathizers and someone who would soon join the Bolshevik party, later admitted that the demonstration was intended to ‘probe’ the scope for a socialist insurrection.

The Provisional Government was crippled by internal dispute. Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary ministers were insisting on granting regional autonomy to Ukraine; they wanted to recognize its Central Rada — the as yet unofficial elected body that combined a broad range of Ukrainian organizations — as the legal holder of administrative authority in Kiev. The Kadets objected to this as the first step to breaking up the entire multinational state. They resigned from the cabinet when Lvov sided with the socialists. Yet the rump of the cabinet held firm. Loyal troops in Petrograd were sent out to break up the Bolshevik-led demonstration. Dozens of civilians were killed. The Ministry of Internal Affairs seized the opportunity to suppress the Bolshevik party in the capital and manipulate public opinion by the release of documents pointing to the secret German subsidy. A warrant was issued for Lenin’s arrest. Lenin fled to sanctuary in Finland; Trotsky flaunted his sympathy with the Bolsheviks and was taken into custody. The rest of the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd went underground and waited for the political storm to blow over.

Lvov had run out of energy in the emergency; he could see no future for his premiership and handed over power to Kerenski, who spent weeks putting together a fresh cabinet. The June military offensive was a disaster and the Central Powers marched deep into Ukraine. War-weariness spread to garrisons and trenches. Food supplies to Russian cities dipped. Industrial conflict intensified in factories and mines as owners faced down the demands for higher wages. Inflation racked the financial system. Law enforcement was pitiful while garrison troops showed allegiance exclusively to the nearby soviets. Peasants began to use the gentry’s pastures and woods without compensation, and it was obvious that a vast land grab was in the offing. The outlying regions of the old Russian Empire grew restless; and as the economic crisis sharpened, local administrations took to ignoring Petrograd and engaging in self-rule. The socialist ministers who had served under Lvov resigned in order to devote themselves to shoring up the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Petrograd Soviet. Kerenski held supreme power but was politically isolated. His oratory was losing its impact. His capacity to impose the decrees of the Provisional Government was diminishing.

Few options were available to him as he sought to widen his base of support. On 25 August he opened a State Conference that brought together every anti-Bolshevik group from the Kadets through to the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. His idea was to demonstrate that Russian politicians were still capable of responding to the country’s needs in times of war. He spoke with something like his earlier panache and was feted by female admirers as he left the proceedings.

But it escaped nobody’s attention that the Commander-in-Chief Lavr Kornilov was greeted rapturously by the liberals and right-ofcentre groupings. Kerenski assured Kornilov that he still desired to reinforce the eastern front and bring the city soviets to heel. Kornilov consented to send reliable troops from the front to quell the Petrograd disorder. As the trains started to move them to the capital, Kerenski changed his mind for fear that Kornilov might be scheming against him. He gave orders for Kornilov to pull back his contingent. This exasperated Kornilov, who concluded that Kerenski now lacked the nerve to act for the good of the country. The situation was not helped by the confusing reports received by Kerenski from his own military adviser Boris Savinkov. The advance on Petrograd continued and developed into an outright mutiny. Kerenski in panic turned to the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries, asking them to go out and cajole Kornilov’s force into disobeying his commands. Bolsheviks joined in the effort and the mutiny collapsed. Kornilov was put under arrest. Kerenski drew a sombre lesson. Noting that the Kadets had cheered on Kornilov as the hope of Russia, he called a Democratic Conference at the end of September that excluded all those liberals who had failed to stand by the Provisional Government. Kerenski saw this as the only way to obtain broad popular approval.

Hatred for the Romanovs remained strong among workers, and Kerenski worried that things might run out of control. His first thought was to arraign the former emperor before a proper court and, if he was found not guilty, send him off to England and his cousin George V. But the Provisional Government, with all its pressing difficulties, formulated no decisive policy. A commission was appointed to investigate Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and the rest of the Romanov family. The public agitation against the Romanovs induced the Provisional Government to enquire whether the British would give asylum to the Romanovs. Kerenski, when Minister of Justice in the first cabinet, had gone to see the former Emperor Nicholas at Tsarskoe Selo and pass on best wishes from his Windsor cousins, but the family was deprived of liberty for its own protection. But now, although Lloyd George had no objection, George V