2. The Soviet parliament cannot refuse the Council of People’s Commissars the right to issue, without prior discussion by the Central Executive Committee, urgent decrees within the framework of the general program of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets;
3. The Central Executive Committee exercises general control over the activity of the Council of People’s Commissars and is free to change the government or its individual members …
44
Spiro’s no-confidence motion was defeated 25 to 20: the low vote resulted from the withdrawal of the nine Bolsheviks, some of them commissars, who had announced their resignation at this meeting (see above, this page). The negative victory was not enough for Lenin: he wanted it affirmed, formally and unequivocally, by a vote on Uritskii’s motion, that his government had the power to legislate. But the prospect looked in doubt because Bolshevik ranks had suddenly shrunk: a preliminary count showed that a vote on Uritskii’s motion would produce a tie (23–23). To prevent this, Lenin and Trotsky announced that they would take part in the voting—an action equivalent to ministers joining the legislature in voting on a law which they had submitted for its approval. If Russia’s “parliamentarians” had had more experience, they would have refused to participate in the travesty. But they stayed and they voted. Uritskii’s motion carried 25–23, the decisive two votes being cast by Lenin and Trotsky. By this simple procedure, the two Bolshevik leaders arrogated to themselves legislative authority and transformed the CEC and the Congress of Soviets, which it represented, from legislative into consultative bodies. It was a watershed in the history of the Soviet constitution.
Later that day, the Sovnarkom announced that its decrees acquired force of law when they appeared in the pages of the official Gazette of the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government (Gazeta Vremennogo Rabochego i Krest’ianskogo Pravitel’stva).
The Sovnarkom now became in theory what it had been in fact since its inception, an organ combining executive and legislative authority. The CEC was allowed for a while longer to enjoy the right to debate the actions of the government, a right which, even if it had no eifect on policy, at least provided opportunities for criticism. But after June–July 1918, when non-Bolsheviks were ejected from it, the CEC turned into an echo chamber in which Bolshevik deputies routinely “ratified” the decisions of the Bolshevik Sovnarkom, which, in turn, implemented decisions of the Bolshevik Central Committee.*
This sudden and complete collapse of democratic forces and their subsequent inability to reclaim constitutional powers recalls the failure of the Supreme Privy Council in 1730 to impose constitutional restraints on the Russian monarchy: then, as now, a firm “no” from the autocrat proved sufficient.
From this day on, Russia was ruled by decree. Lenin assumed the prerogatives that the tsars had enjoyed before October 1905: his will was law. In the words of Trotsky: “From the moment the Provisional Government was declared deposed, Lenin acted in matters large and small as the government.”† The “decrees” which the Sovnarkom issued, although bearing a name borrowed from revolutionary France and previously unknown to Russian constitutional law, corresponded fully to imperial ukazy in that like them they dealt indiscriminately with the most fundamental as well as most trivial matters, and went into effect the instant the autocrat affixed his signature to them. (According to Isaac Steinberg, “Lenin was ordinarily of the opinion that his signature had to suffice for any governmental act.”)45 Bonch-Bruevich, Lenin’s executive secretary, writes that decrees acquired force of law only after being signed by Lenin, even if issued on the initiative of one of the commissars.46‡ These practices would have been entirely understandable to a Nicholas I or Alexander III. The system of government which the Bolsheviks set in place within two weeks of the October coup marked a reversion to the autocratic regime that had ruled Russia before 1905: they simply wiped out the twelve intervening years of constitutionalism.
The intelligentsia was the one group that did not participate in the nationwide duvan and would not allow itself to be diverted by “clinking bags.” It had welcomed the February Revolution with boundless enthusiasm; it rejected the October coup. Even some Communist historians have come to concede that students, professors, writers, artists, and others who had led the opposition to tsarism, overwhelmingly opposed the Bolshevik takeover: one of them states that the intelligentsia “almost to a man” engaged in “sabotage.”47 It took the Bolsheviks months of coercion and cajolery to break this resistance. The intelligentsia began to cooperate with the Bolsheviks only after it had concluded that the regime was here to stay and boycotting it would only make matters worse.
The most dramatic manifestation of the refusal by Russia’s educated class to accept the October coup was the general strike of white-collar personnel (sluzhashchie). Although the Bolsheviks then and since have dismissed this action as “sabotage,” it was, in fact, a grandiose, non-violent act of protest by the nation’s civil servants and employees of private enterprises against the destruction of democracy.48 The strike, intended to demonstrate to the Bolsheviks their unpopularity and, at the same time, make it impossible for them to govern, broke out spontaneously. It quickly acquired an organizational structure, first in the shape of strike committees in the ministries, banks, and other public institutions and then in a coordinating body called the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution (Komitet Spaseniia Rodiny i Revoliutsii). The committee originally consisted of Municipal Duma officials, members of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets dissolved by the Bolsheviks, representatives of the All-Russian Congress of Peasant Soviets, the Union of Unions of Government Employees, and several clerical unions, including that of postal workers. Gradually, representatives of Russian socialist parties, the Left SRs excepted, also joined. The committee appealed to the nation not to cooperate with the usurpers and to fight for the restoration of democracy.49 On October 28 it called on the Bolsheviks to relinquish power.50
On October 29, the Union of Unions of Government Employees in Petrograd, in cooperation with the committee (which apparently financed the strike), asked its membership to stop work:
The committee of the Union of Unions of Government Employees at Petrograd, having discussed with the delegates of the central committees of the All-Russian Union of Government Employees the question of the usurpation of power by the Bolshevik group in the Petrograd Soviet a month before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and considering that this criminal act threatens the destruction of Russia and all the conquests of the Revolution, in accord with the Ail-Russian Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution … resolved that:
1. Work in all the administrative departments of the government shall cease immediately;
2. The questions of food supply for the army and the population, as well as the activity of the institutions concerned with the maintenance of public order, are to be decided by the Committee for the Salvation [of the Fatherland and the Revolution] in cooperation with the committees of the Union of Unions;
3. The action of the administrative departments which have already ceased their work is approved.
51
The appeal was widely heeded: soon work in all the ministries in Petrograd ground to a halt. Except for porters and some secretarial staff, their personnel either failed to come to work or came and sat doing nothing. The freshly appointed Bolshevik commissars, having no place to go, hung around Lenin’s headquarters in Smolnyi, issuing orders to which no one paid attention. Access to the ministries was barred to them:
When, after the first October days, the People’s Commissars came to work in the former ministries, they found, along with mountains of papers and folders, only couriers, cleaning people, and doormen. All the officials, beginning with the directors and administrators and ending with typists and copiers, considered it their duty to refuse to recognize the commissars and to stay away from work.
52
Trotsky had an embarrassing experienc
e when on November 9—two weeks after receiving his appointment—he ventured to visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Yesterday, the new “minister,” Trotsky, came to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After calling together all the officials, he said: “I am the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trotsky.” He was greeted with ironic laughter. To this he paid no attention and told them to go back to their work. They went … but to their own homes, with the intention of not returning to [the] office as long as Trotsky remained head of the ministry.
53
Shliapnikov, the Commissar of Labor, had a similar reception when he tried to take charge of his ministry.54 The Bolshevik Government thus found itself in the absurd situation of being unable, weeks after it had assumed authority, to persuade the country’s civil servants to work for it. It could hardly be said, therefore, to have functioned.
The strike spread to non-governmental institutions. Private banks had shut their doors as early as October 26–27. On November 1, the All-Russian Union of Postal and Telegraph Employees announced that unless the Bolshevik Government gave way to a coalition cabinet it would order its membership to stop work.55 Soon telegraph and telephone workers walked out in Petrograd, Moscow, and some provincial towns. On November 2, Petrograd’s pharmacists went on strike; on November 7, water transport workers followed suit as did schoolteachers. On November 8, the Union of Printers in Petrograd announced that if the Bolsheviks carried out their Press Decree they, too, would strike.
For the Bolsheviks, the most painful were work stoppages at the government’s fiscal institutions, the State Bank and the State Treasury. They could manage for the time being, without the ministries of Foreign Affairs or of Labor, but they had to have money. The bank and the Treasury refused to honor the Sovnarkom’s requests for funds, on the grounds that it was not a legitimate government: couriers sent by Smolnyi with drafts signed by People’s Commissars came back empty-handed. The staffs of the bank and the treasury recognized the old Provisional Government and paid only its representatives; they also honored requests from legitimate public authorities and the military. On November 4, in response to Bolshevik charges that its actions were causing hardship to the population, the State Bank declared that during the preceding week it had paid out 610 million rubles for the needs of the population and the armed forces; 40 million of that sum went to representatives of the old Provisional Government.56
On October 30, the Sovnarkom ordered all state and private banks to open for business the next day. Refusal to honor checks and drafts from government institutions, it warned, would lead to the arrest of the directors.57 Under this threat, some private banks reopened, but still none would cash checks issued by the Sovnarkom.
Desperate for money, the Bolsheviks resorted to harsher measures. On November 7, V. R. Menzhinskii, the new Commissar of Finance, appeared at the State Bank with armed sailors and a military band. He demanded 10 million rubles. The bank refused. He returned four days later with more troops and presented an ultimatum: unless money was forthcoming within twenty minutes, not only would the staff of the State Bank lose their jobs and pensions but those of military age would be drafted. The bank stood firm. The Sovnarkom dismissed some of the bank’s officials, but it still had no money, more than two weeks after assuming governmental responsibilities.
On November 14, the clerical personnel of Petrograd banks met to decide what to do next. Employees of the State Bank voted overwhelmingly to deny recognition to the Sovnarkom and go on with the strike. Clerks of private banks reached the same conclusion. The staff of the State Treasury voted 142–14 to refuse the Bolsheviks access to government funds: they also rejected a Sovnarkom request for a “short-term advance” of 25 million rubles.58
In the face of this resistance, the Bolsheviks had recourse to force. On November 17, Menzhinskii reappeared at the State Bank: he found it deserted, save for some couriers and watchmen. Officers of the bank were brought in under armed guard. When they refused to hand over money, guards compelled them to open the vaults, from which Menzhinskii removed 5 million rubles. He carried it to Smolnyi in a velvet bag, which he triumphantly deposited on Lenin’s desk.59 The whole operation resembled a bank holdup.
The Bolsheviks now had access to Treasury funds, but strikes of bank personnel continued, despite arrests; nearly all banks remained closed. The State Bank, occupied by Bolshevik troops, was inoperative. It was to break the resistance of financial personnel that Lenin initially created, in December 1917, his security police, the Cheka.
A contemporary survey showed that in mid-December work was at a standstill at the ministries (now renamed commissariats) of Foreign Affairs, Enlightenment, Justice, and Supply, while the State Bank was in complete disarray.60 White-collar strikes also broke out in the provincial towns: in mid-November the municipal workers of Moscow struck; their colleagues in Petrograd followed suit on December 3. These work stoppages had one common purpose: modeled on the General Strike of October 1905, they were to force the government to renounce claims to autocracy. It was this powerful demonstration that persuaded Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and some other associates of Lenin that they had to share power with other socialist parties or the government could not function.
Lenin, however, held his ground and in mid-November ordered a counter-offensive. The Bolsheviks now physically occupied, one by one, every public institution in Petrograd and compelled their employees, under threat of severe punishment, to work for them. The following incident, reported by a contemporary newspaper, was repeated in many places:
On December 28 [OS], the Bolsheviks seized the Department of Customs. Directing the occupied Customs office is an official named Fadenev. On the eve of the Christmas holidays, following a general meeting of departmental employees, Fadenev had ordered everyone to return to work on December 28: those who failed to appear, he threatened, would lose their jobs and be liable to prosecution. On December 28, the department building was occupied by inspectors. The Bolsheviks allowed into the building only those employees who would sign a statement of full subordination to the “Council of People’s Commissars.”
61
The directors of the Customs Department were subsequently dismissed and replaced with lower clerical staff. This pattern was repeated as the Bolsheviks conquered, in the literal sense of the word, the apparatus of the central government, often with the support of the junior staff whom they won over with promises of rapid promotion. They broke the strike of white collar employees only in January 1918, after they had dispersed the Constituent Assembly and ended all hope that they would voluntarily surrender or even share power.
During its initial three weeks, the Sovnarkom led a paper existence since it had neither a staff to execute its orders nor money to pay its own people. The Bolshevik commissars, barred from their offices, operated from Room 67 at Smolnyi, where Lenin had his headquarters. Lenin, ever fearful of attempts on his life, ordered that no one except People’s Commissars be allowed into his office: he rarely left Smolnyi, where he lived and officiated closely guarded by Latvians.* 62 As the Secretary of the Sovnarkom he picked the twenty-five-year-old N. P. Gorbunov. The new secretary, who had no administrative experience, confiscated a typewriter and a table and proceeded to peck out decrees with two fingers.63 V. Bonch-Bruevich, a devoted Bolshevik and a student of religious dissenters, was appointed Lenin’s private assistant. The two men hired clerical personnel. By the end of the year, the Sovnarkom had forty-eight clerical employees; in the next two months it acquired seventeen more. Judging by a group photograph taken in October 1918, a high proportion of these were clean-cut bourgeois young ladies.
73. Latvians guarding Lenin’s office in Smolnyi: 1917.
Prior to November 15, 1917, the Sovnarkom held no regular sessions: according to Gorbunov one meeting took place on November 3, but its only order of business was to hear a report by Nogin on the fighting in Moscow. During this period such decrees and ordnances as came out were the work of Bolshevik functionaries, who acted
independently, often without consulting Lenin. According to Larin, only two of the first fifteen decrees issued by the Soviet Government were discussed in the Sovnarkom: the Decree on the Press, drafted by Lunarcharskii, and the Decree on Elections to the Constituent Assembly, prepared by himself. Gorbunov says Lenin authorized him to cable directives to the provinces on his own, showing him only every tenth telegram.64
The first regular meeting of the Sovnarkom took place on November 15, with an agenda of twenty items. It was agreed that the commissars would move out of Smolnyi as expeditiously as possible and take over their respective commissariats, which they did in the weeks that followed, with the help of armed detachments. From that day onward, the Sovnarkom met almost daily on the third floor of Smolnyi, usually in the evening: the meetings sometimes ran all night. Attendance was not much restricted, with many lower-level officials and non-Bolshevik technical experts brought in as the need arose. The commissars, lifelong revolutionaries, felt awkward. Simon Liberman, a Menshevik timber expert who occasionally attended Sovnarkom sessions, recalls the meetings as follows:
74. Lenin and secretarial staff of the Council of People’s Commissars: October 1918.
A peculiar atmosphere prevailed at the conferences of the highest administrative councils of Soviet Russia, presided over by Lenin. Despite all the efforts of an officious secretary to impart to each session the solemn character of a cabinet meeting, we could not help feeling that here we were, attending another sitting of an underground revolutionary committee! For years we had belonged to various underground organizations. All of this seemed so familiar. Many of the commissars remained seated in their topcoats or greatcoats; most of them wore the forbidding leather jackets. In wintertime some wore felt boots and thick sweaters. They remained thus clothed throughout the meetings.
The Russian Revolution Page 82
