The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  These precautions made good military and political sense: it was what the French had done in September 1914 as the Germans approached Paris and what the Bolsheviks would do in March 1918 under similar circumstances. But the socialist intelligentsia saw in them only a ploy of the “bourgeoisie” to turn over to the enemy “Red Petrograd,” the main bastion of “revolutionary democracy.” As soon as the press made public the government’s evacuation plans (October 6) the Bureau of the Ispolkom announced that no evacuation could take place without its approval. Trotsky addressed the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet and persuaded it to adopt a resolution condemning the government for wanting to abandon the “capital of the Revolution”: if unable to defend Petrograd, his resolution said, it should either make peace or yield to another government.137 The Provisional Government at once capitulated. That same day it declared that in view of objections it would delay the evacuation for a month. Eventually it gave up the idea altogether.138

  On October 9, the government ordered additional units of the garrison to the front to help stem the anticipated German assault. As could have been expected from past experience, the garrison resisted.139 The dispute was turned over to the Ispolkom for adjudication.

  At its meeting later that day, Mark Broido, a worker affiliated with the Mensheviks, moved a resolution calling on the Petrograd garrison to prepare to defend the city and for the Soviet to form (or, rather, reconstitute) a “Committee of Revolutionary Defense” to “work out a plan” to this end.140 Caught by surprise, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs opposed Broido’s resolution on the grounds that it would strengthen the Provisional Government. It passed but with the barest majority (13–12). Following the vote, the Bolsheviks realized they had made a mistake. They had a Military Organization which they were grooming for armed insurrection: it was subordinated to the Bolshevik Central Committee and independent of the Soviet. This status was a mixed blessing: for while the Military Organization could be depended on faithfully to execute the orders of the Bolshevik high command, as the organ of one political party it could not act on behalf of the Soviet in whose name Bolsheviks intended to carry out their power seizure. A few years later, Trotsky would recall that the Bolsheviks, aware of this handicap, had decided already in September 1917 to avail themselves of any opportunity to create what he calls a “non-party ‘soviet’ organ to lead the uprising.”141 This is confirmed by K. A. Mekhonoshin, a member of the Military Organization, who says that the Bolsheviks felt it necessary “to transfer the center linking [them] with units of the garrison from the Military Organization of the party to the Soviet so as to be able, at the moment of action, to step forward in the name of the Soviet.”142 The organization proposed by the Mensheviks was ideally suited for this purpose.

  That evening (October 9) when the Menshevik proposal came up for a vote at the Plenum of the Soviet, the Bolshevik deputies reversed their stand: they now agreed to the Soviet’s forming an organization to defend Petrograd from the Germans as long as it would defend it also from the “domestic” enemy. By the latter they meant the Provisional Government, which, in the words of one Bolshevik speaker, was conniving to surrender the “main bastion of the Revolution to the Kaiser, who, in turn, according to the Bolshevik resolution, was supported in his advance on Petrograd by the Allied Imperialists.”143 To this end, the Bolsheviks proposed that the “Military Defense Committee” should assume full charge of the city’s security against threats from the German “imperialists” as well as from Russian “counterrevolutionaries.”

  Surprised by the way the Bolsheviks reformulated Broido’s proposal and knowing why they did so, the Mensheviks resolutely opposed the amendment. Defense of the city was the responsibility of the government and its Military Staff. But the Plenum preferred the Bolshevik version and voted for the formation of a “Revolutionary Committee of Defense”

  to gather in its hands all the forces participating in the defense of Petrograd and its approaches [as well as] to take all measures to arm the workers, in this manner ensuring both the revolutionary defense of Petrograd and the security of the people against the openly prepared assault of the military and civilian Kornilovites.

  144

  This extraordinary resolution adroitly combined the newly formed committee’s responsibility for meeting the real threat posed by the German armies with the imaginary one from the supporters of Kornilov, who were nowhere in sight. The Mensheviks and SRs now reaped the harvest of their demagoguery, their insistence on the “bourgeois” character of the Provisional Government and their obsessive concern with the counterrevolution.

  The vote had decisive importance. Trotsky later claimed that it sealed the fate of the Provisional Government: it represented, in his words, a “silent” or “dry” revolution that gained the Bolsheviks “three-quarters if not nine-tenths” of the victory consummated on October 25–26.145

  The matter was still not completely settled, however, because the decision of the Plenum required the approval of the Ispolkom and the entire Soviet. At a closed session of the Ispolkom on October 12, the two Menshevik representatives assailed the Bolshevik resolution, but they again suffered defeat, the body backing the Plenum’s decision unanimously, against their two votes. The Ispolkom renamed the new organization the Military-Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet, or Milrevkom for short) and empowered it to take charge of the defenses of the city.146

  The issue was formally sealed at the meeting of the Soviet on October 16. To deflect attention from themselves, the Bolsheviks nominated as drafter of the resolution establishing the Milrevkom an unknown young paramedic, the Left SR P. E. Lazimir. The SRs, who belatedly awoke to the significance of the Bolshevik maneuver, sought, without success, to obtain a delay in the vote, probably to assemble their absent delegates; when this motion failed, they abstained. Broido once again warned that the Milrevkom was a deception, its true mission being not to defend Petrograd but to carry out a seizure of power. Trotsky diverted the attention of the Soviet by citing passages from a newspaper interview with Rodzianko, which he chose to interpret to mean that the onetime chairman of the Duma (who in any event held no post in the government) would welcome a German occupation of Petrograd.147 The Bolsheviks nominated Lazimir to chair the Milrevkom, with Podvoiskii as his deputy (on the eve of the October coup Podvoiskii would formally assume leadership of the organization).* The remaining members of the Milrevkom are difficult to ascertain: they seem to have been exclusively Bolsheviks and Left SRs.† But it did not much matter who was on the Milrevkom since it was only a flag of convenience for the true organizer of the coup, the Bolshevik Military Organization.

  Trotsky now launched a war of nerves. When Dan requested the Bolsheviks to state clearly in the Soviet whether or not they were preparing an uprising, as rumored, Trotsky maliciously asked whether he wanted this information for the benefit of Kerensky and his counterintelligence. “We are told that we are organizing a staff for the seizure of power. We make no secret of this.…”148 Two days later, however, he asserted that if an insurrection were to take place, the Petrograd Soviet would make the decision: “We still have not decided on an insurrection.”149

  The deliberate ambivalence of these statements notwithstanding, the Soviet had been put on notice. The socialists either did not hear what Trotsky was saying or resigned themselves to the inevitability of a Bolshevik “adventure.” They feared Bolshevik actions much less than possible right-wing responses, which would sweep them along with Lenin’s followers. On the eve of the Bolshevik coup (October 19), the Military Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in Petrograd adopted a “neutral” position on the anticipated uprising. A circular note sent to its members and sympathizers in the garrison urged them to stay away from demonstrations and to be “fully prepared for the merciless suppression … of possible assaults by the Black Hundreds, pogromists, and counterrevolutionaries.”150 This left no doubt where the SR leaders saw the main threat to democracy.

  Trotsky kep
t Petrograd in a state of constant tension, promising, warning, threatening, cajoling, inspiring. Sukhanov describes a typical scene he witnessed during those days:

  The mood of the audience of over three thousand, filling the hall, was definitely one of excitement; their hush indicated expectation. The public, of course, consisted mainly of workers and soldiers, though it had not a few typical petty bourgeois figures, male and female.

  63. The Military-Revolutionary Committee (Milrevkom), which staged the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. In center, Chairman Podvoiskii. On his right, Nevskii. On the extreme right, Raskolnikov.

  The ovation given Trotsky seemed to have been cut short out of curiosity and impatience: what was he going to say? Trotsky at once began to heat up the atmosphere with his skill and brilliance. I recall that he depicted for a long time and with extraordinary force the difficult … picture of suffering in the trenches. Through my mind flashed thoughts about the unavoidable contradictions between the parts of this rhetorical whole. But Trotsky knew what he was doing. The essential thing was the mood. The political conclusions had been familiar for a long time …

  Soviet power [Trotsky said] was destined not only to put an end to the suffering in the trenches. It would provide land and stop internal disorder. Once again resounded the old recipes against hunger: how the soldiers, sailors, and working girls would requisition the bread from the propertied, and send it free of charge to the front.… But on this decisive “Day of the Petrograd Soviet” [October 22] Trotsky went further:

  “The Soviet government will give everything the country has to the poor and to the soldiers at the front. You, bourgeois, own two coats? Give one to the soldier freezing in the trenches. You have warm boots? Stay at home. Your boots are needed by a worker …”

  The mood around me verged on ecstasy. It seemed that the mob would at any moment, spontaneously and unasked, burst into some kind of religious hymn. Trotsky formulated a short general resolution or proclaimed some general formula, on the order of: “We will defend the cause of the workers and peasants to the last drop of blood.”

  Who is in favor? The crowd of thousands raised its hands like one man. I saw the uplifted hands and burning eyes of men, women, adolescents, workers, soldiers, peasants, and typical petty bourgeois figures …

  [They] agreed. [They] vowed … I watched this truly grandiose spectacle with an unusually

  heavy

  heart.

  151

  By October 16, the Bolsheviks had at their disposal two organizations, each nominally subject to the Soviet: the Military-Revolutionary Committee to carry out the coup and the forthcoming Second Congress of Soviets to legitimize it. They had by now effectively superseded the authority of the Provisional Government in the Military Staff and that of the Ispolkom in the soviets. The Milrevkom and the Congress of Soviets were to carry out the Bolshevik decision, taken in deep secrecy on October 10, to seize power.

  Sometime between October 3 and 10, Lenin slipped back into Petrograd: he did it so surreptitiously that Communist historians to this day have been unable to determine the time of his return. He lived in concealment until October 24 in the Vyborg District, surfacing only after the Bolshevik coup was already underway.

  On October 10—one day after the Ispolkom and the Soviet Plenum had voted to constitute a Defense Committee and very likely in connection with that event—twelve members of the Bolshevik Central Committee gathered to decide on the question of an armed uprising. The meeting took place at night, surrounded with extreme precautions, in the apartment of Sukhanov. Lenin came in disguise, clean-shaven, wearing a wig and glasses. Our knowledge of what transpired on this occasion is imperfect, because of the two protocols taken only one has been published and even this one in a doctored version.152 The fullest account comes from the recollections of Trotsky.153

  Lenin arrived determined to secure an unequivocal commitment to a coup before October 25. When Trotsky countered, “We are convening a Congress of Soviets in which our majority is assured beforehand,” Lenin answered that

  the question of the Second Congress of Soviets … held for him no interest whatever: of what importance is it? will it even take place? and what can it accomplish even if it does meet? It is necessary to tear out [vyrazi’] power. One must not tie oneself to the Congress of Soviets, it is silly and absurd to forewarn the enemy about the date of the uprising. October 25 may serve at best as camouflage, but the uprising must be carried out earlier and independently of the Congress of Soviets. The party must seize power, arms in hand, and then we will talk of the Congress of Soviets.

  154

  Trotsky thought that Lenin not only gave too much credit to the “enemy” but also underestimated the value of the soviets as a cover: the party could not seize power as Lenin wanted, independently of the soviets, because the workers and soldiers learned everything, including what they knew of the Bolshevik Party, through the medium of the soviets. Taking power outside the soviet structure would only sow confusion.

  64. Grigorii Zinoviev.

  The differences between Lenin and Trotsky centered on the timing and justification for the coup. But some members of the Central Committee questioned whether the party should even attempt to take power. Uritskii argued that the Bolsheviks were technically unprepared for an uprising and that the 40,000 guns at their disposal were inadequate. The most strenuous objections came again from Kamenev and Zinoviev, who explained their position in a confidential letter to Bolshevik organizations.155 The time for a coup was not yet: “We are profoundly convinced that to rise now means to gamble not only with the destiny of our party but with that of the Russian Revolution as well as that of the international revolution.” The party could expect to do well in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, capturing at a minimum one-third of the seats, thereby bolstering the authority of the soviets, in which its influence was on the ascendant. “The Constituent Assembly plus the soviets—this is the type of combined government institutions toward which we strive.” They rejected Lenin’s claim that the majority of Russians and international labor supported the Bolsheviks. Their pessimistic assessment led them to counsel a patient, defensive strategy in place of armed action.

  To this argument Lenin responded that it would be “senseless to wait for the Constituent Assembly, which will not be with us, because this will complicate our task.” In this, he had the support of the majority.

  As the discussions drew to a close, the Central Committee divided into three factions: (1) a faction of one, consisting of Lenin, who alone favored an immediate seizure of power, without regard to the Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly; (2) Zinoviev and Kamenev, supported by Nogin, Vladimir Miliutin, and Aleksei Rykov, who opposed a coup d’état for the time being; and (3) the rest of the participants, six in number, who agreed on a coup but followed Trotsky in preferring that it be carried out in conjunction with the Congress of Soviets and under its formal sponsorship—that is, in two weeks. A majority of ten voted in favor of an armed rising as “unavoidable and fully matured.”156 The timing was left open. Judging by ensuing events, it was to precede the Second Congress of Soviets by one or more days. Lenin had to acquiesce to this compromise, having gained his main point that the congress merely be asked to ratify the coup.

  65. L. B. Kamenev.

  The formation of the Military-Revolutionary Committee and the convocation of the Congress of Northern Soviets which, in turn, initiated the Second Congress of Soviets, described previously, implemented the decision of the Central Committee on October 10.

  Kamenev found this decision unacceptable. He resigned from the Central Committee and a week later explained his stand in an interview with Novaia zhizn’. He said that he and Zinoviev had sent a circular letter to party organizations in which they “firmly argued against the party assuming the initiative in any armed uprisings in the near future.” Even though the party had not decided on such an uprising, he lied, he, Zinoviev, and some others believed that to “seize po
wer by force of arms” on the eve of the Congress of Soviets and independently of it would have fatal consequences for the Revolution. An uprising was inevitable, but in good time.157

  The Central Committee held three more meetings before the coup: October 20, 21, and 24.158 The first of these had on its agenda the alleged breach of party discipline committed by Kamenev and Zinoviev in making public their opposition to an armed uprising.* Lenin wrote the committee two angry letters in which he demanded the expulsion of the “strikebreakers”: “We cannot tell the capitalists the truth, namely that we have decided [to go] on strike [read: make an uprising] and to conceal from them the choice of timing.”159 The committee failed to act on this demand.

  The minutes of these three meetings appear so truncated as to render them virtually useless: if one were to take them at face value, one would gather that the coup, by then already in progress, was not even on the agenda.

  The Central Committee’s tactic called for provoking the government into retaliatory measures which would make it possible to launch the coup disguised as a defense of the Revolution. The tactic was no secret. As summarized by the SR organ, Delo naroda, weeks before the event, the Provisional Government would be accused of conspiring with Kornilov to suppress the Revolution and with the Kaiser to turn Petrograd over to the enemy, as well as of preparing to disperse both the Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly.160 Trotsky and Stalin confirmed after the event that such had been the party’s plan. In Trotsky’s words: