The Penguin History of Modern Russia

something called communism. Did this mean that socialism and communism were one and the same thing?

Lenin had given a lengthy answer to the question in The State and Revolution, which he wrote in summer 1917 and which appeared in 1918. His contention was that the passage from capitalism to communism required an intermediate stage called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This dictatorship would inaugurate the construction of socialism. Mass political participation would be facilitated and an unprecedentedly high level of social and material welfare would be provided. Once the resistance of the former ruling classes had been broken, furthermore, the need for repressive agencies would disappear. Dictatorship would steadily become obsolete and the state would start to wither away. Then a further phase — communism — would begin. Society would be run according to the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Under communism there would be no political or national oppression, no economic exploitation. Humanity would have reached its ultimate stage of development.¹

Most other socialists in Russia and elsewhere, including Marxists, forecast that Lenin’s ideas would lead not to a self-terminating dictatorship but to an extremely oppressive, perpetual dictatorship.² They were furious with Lenin not only out of horror at his ideas but also because he brought them too into disrepute in their own countries. Liberals, conservatives and the far right had no interest in the niceties of the polemics between Bolsheviks and other socialists. For them, Bolshevik policies were simply proof of the inherently oppressive orientation of socialism in general. ‘Bolshevism’ was a useful stick of propaganda with which to beat the socialist movements in their own countries.

In 1917, however, such discussions seemed very abstract; for few of Lenin’s critics gave him any chance of staying in power. Lenin himself could hardly believe his good fortune. Whenever things looked bleak, he convinced himself that his regime — like the Paris Commune of 1871 — would offer a paradigm for later generations of socialists to emulate. The Bolsheviks might be tossed out of power at any time. While governing the country, they ‘sat on their suitcases’ lest they suddenly had to flee into hiding. Surely the luck of the Bolsheviks would soon run out? The governments, diplomats and journalists of western and central Europe were less interested in events in Petrograd than in the shifting fortunes of their own respective armies. Information about the Bolsheviks was scanty, and it took months for Lenin to become a personage whose policies were known in any detail outside Russia.

For the events of 25 October had taken most people by surprise even in Petrograd. Most workers, shop- owners and civil servants went about their customary business. The trams ran; the streets were clear of trouble and there were no demonstrations. Shops had their usual customers. Newspapers appeared normally. It had been a quiet autumnal day and the weather was mild.

Only in the central districts had anything unusual been happening. The Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet as well as the Red Guards, under Trotski’s guidance, were hard at work organizing the siege of the Winter Palace, where Kerenski and several of his ministers were trapped, and in securing the occupation of other key strategic points: the post and telegraph offices, the railway stations, and the garrisons. The battleship Aurora from the Baltic Sea fleet was brought up the river Neva to turn its guns towards the Winter Palace. Kerenski could see that he lacked the forces to save the Provisional Government. Exploiting the chaos, he got into an official limousine which was allowed through the ranks of the besiegers. Lenin had meanwhile come out of hiding. Taking a tram from the city’s outskirts, he arrived at Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute, where he harassed his party colleagues into intensifying efforts to take power before the Second Congress of Soviets opened later in the day

The reason for Lenin’s continuing impatience must surely have stemmed from his anticipation that the Bolsheviks would not have a clear majority at the Congress of Soviets — and indeed they gained only 300 out of 670 elected delegates.³ He could not drive his policies through the Congress without some compromise with other parties. It is true that many Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had lately accepted that an exclusively socialist coalition, including the Bolsheviks, should be formed. But Lenin could think of nothing worse than the sharing of power with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. The Congress of Soviets might foist a coalition upon him. His counter-measure was to get the Military-Revolutionary Committee to grab power hours in advance of the Congress on the assumption that this would probably annoy the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries enough to dissuade them from joining a coalition with the Bolsheviks.

The ploy worked. As the Congress assembled in the Smolny Institute, the fug of cigarette smoke grew denser. Workers and soldiers sympathetic to the Bolsheviks filled the main hall. The appearance of Trotski and Lenin was greeted with a cheering roar. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were disgusted, and denounced what they described as a Bolshevik party coup d’etat. The Menshevik Yuli Martov declared that most of the Bolshevik delegates to the Congress had been elected on the understanding that a general socialist coalition would come to power, and his words were given a respectful hearing. Yet tempers ran high among other Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries present. In an act of stupendous folly, they stormed out of the hall.⁴

Their exodus meant that the Bolsheviks, who had the largest delegation, became the party with a clear-cut majority. Lenin and Trotski proceeded to form their own government. Trotski suggested that it should be called the Council of People’s Commissars (or, as it was in its Russian acronym, Sovnarkom). Thus he contrived to avoid the bourgeois connotations of words such as ‘ministers’ and ‘cabinets’. Lenin would not be Prime Minister or Premier, but merely Chairman, and Trotski would serve as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The Second Congress of Soviets had not been abandoned by all the foes of the Bolsheviks: the Left Socialist- Revolutionaries had remained inside the Institute. Lenin and Trotski invited them to join Sovnarkom, but were turned down. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were waiting to see whether the Bolshevik-led administration would survive; and they, too, aspired to the establishment of a general socialist coalition.

Lenin and Trotski set their faces against such a coalition; but they were opposed by colleagues in the Bolshevik Central Committee who also wanted to negotiate with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to this end. Furthermore, the central executive body of the Railwaymen’s Union threatened to go on strike until a coalition of all socialist parties had been set up, and the political position of Lenin and Trotski was weakened further when news arrived that a Cossack contingent loyal to Kerenski was moving on Petrograd.

But things then swung back in favour of Lenin and Trotski. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries no more wished to sit in a government including Lenin and Trotski than Lenin and Trotski wanted them as colleagues. The negotiations broke down, and Lenin unperturbedly maintained an all-Bolshevik Sovnarkom. Three Bolsheviks resigned from Sovnarkom, thinking this would compel Lenin to back down.⁵ But to no avail. The rail strike petered out, and the Cossacks of General Krasnov were defeated by Sovnarkom’s soldiers on the Pulkovo Heights outside the capital. The Bolshevik leaders who had stood by Lenin were delighted. Victory, both military and political, was anticipated by Lenin and Trotski not only in Russia but also across Europe. Trotski as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs expected simply to publish the secret wartime treaties of the Allies and then to ‘shut up shop’.⁶ For he thought that the Red revolutions abroad would end the need for international diplomacy altogether.

Trotski met the Allied diplomats, mainly with the intention of keeping the regime’s future options open. The burden of energy, however, fell elsewhere. Sovnarkom was the government of a state which was still coming into being. Its coercive powers were patchy in Petrograd, non-existent in the provinces. The Red Guards were ill-trained and not too well disciplined. The garrisons were as reluctant to fight other Russians as they had been to take on the Germans. Public announcements were the most effective weapons in Sovnarkom’s arsenal. On 25 October, Lenin wrote a proclamation justifying the ‘victorious uprising’ by reference to ‘the will of the huge majority of workers, soldiers and peasants’. His sketch of future measures included the bringing of ‘an immediate democratic peace to all the peoples’. In Russia the Constituent Assembly would be convoked. Food supplies would be secured for the towns and workers’ control over industrial establishments instituted. ‘Democratization of the army’ would be achieved. The lands of gentry, crown and church would be transferred ‘to the disposal of the peasant committees’.⁷

Two momentous documents were signed by Lenin on 26 October. The Decree on Peace made a plea to governments and to ‘all the warring peoples’ to bring about a ‘just, democratic peace’. There should be no annexations, no indemnities, no enclosure of small nationalities in larger states against their will. Lenin usually eschewed what he considered as moralistic language, but he now described the Great War as ‘the greatest crime against humanity’:⁸ probably he was trying to use terminology congruent with the terminology of President Woodrow Wilson. But above all he wanted to rally the hundreds of millions of Europe’s workers and soldiers to the banner of socialist revolution; he never doubted that, without revolutions, no worthwhile peace could