The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  One of the commissars, Alexander Tsuriupa, was nearly always ill; he attended these sessions in a semi-reclining position, his feet stretched out on a nearby chair. A number of Lenin’s aides would not take their seats at the conference table but shoved their chairs around helter-skelter all over the room. Lenin alone invariably took his seat at the table as the presiding officer of the occasion. He did so in a neat, almost decorous way. Fotieva, as his personal secretary, sat beside him.

  65

  Lenin, irritated by the unpunctuality and verbosity of his colleagues, worked out strict rules. To prevent chatter, he insisted on strict adherence to the agenda.* To ensure that his commissars showed up on time, he set fines for lateness: five rubles for less than half an hour, ten for more.66

  75. One of the early meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars. Lenin in the center. Behind him, hand at mouth, Stalin.

  According to Liberman, the meetings of the Sovnarkom which he attended never decided on policy but dealt only with implementation:

  I never heard arguments over matters of principle; the discussion always revolved around the problem of finding the best possible methods of carrying out a given measure. Matters of principle were decided elsewhere—in the Political Bureau of the Communist Party.… The two highest organs of the Government which I knew—the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense—discussed practical ways to effect measures already decided upon by the inner sanctum of the party—its Political Bureau.

  †

  To relieve the Sovnarkom of the many trivial issues that threatened to overburden its agenda, a Small Sovnarkom was created on December 18, 1917.

  Government decisions became law when signed by Lenin and usually co-signed by one of the commissars, and then published in the official Gazette, the first issue of which appeared on October 28. It then acquired the status of a “decree” (dekret). Orders issued by the commissars on their own initiative were usually called “resolutions” (postanovleniia). Theory, however, was not always observed in practice. On certain occasions—this happened especially with laws sure to be unpopular—Lenin preferred that decrees be issued by the CEC and signed by its chairman, Sverdlov: this procedure had the effect of shifting the blame from the Bolsheviks onto the soviets. Some important laws were never published—such as the one creating the Cheka. Other measures—for instance, the introduction of the practice of taking hostages (September 1918)—came out in the name of the Commissar of Internal Affairs: it was published in Izvestiia, but is not included in the corpus of Soviet laws and decrees. Before long, the Bolsheviks reverted to the tsarist practice of legislating by means of secret circulars, which were not published at the time and many of which remain unpublished to this day: as under the old regime, the government resorted to this practice in matters involving state security.

  In the first months of Bolshevik rule, decrees were issued not so much for their practical effect as for purposes of propaganda.67 Without means to enforce his laws, and uncertain how long his regime would survive, Lenin thought of them as models from which future generations could learn how to make revolution. Since they were not expected to be implemented, the early decrees were exhortative in tone and careless in phrasing. Lenin gave this matter serious attention only three months after coming to power: on January 30, 1918, he ordered that legislative drafts be submitted for review to the Commissariat of Justice, which had trained jurists.68 Laws issued from the spring of 1918 onward became so convoluted it is obvious they were not only reviewed but drafted by experienced bureaucrats of the old regime, who now entered Soviet service in large numbers.

  It will be recalled (this page, above) that to appease critics on the Central Committee, Lenin and Trotsky agreed to continue negotiating with the Left SRs on their entry into the government, and to make one more effort to come to terms with the Mensheviks and SRs. The latter objective they never seriously pursued; Lenin had no desire to admit his socialist rivals into partnership. But he did want to bring in the Left SRs. He knew them for what they were: a loosely knit band of revolutionary hotheads, drunk on words, incapable of concerted action because of their faith in mass “spontaneity.” They were no threat, but they had their uses. Their presence in the cabinet would disarm the charge that the Bolsheviks monopolized the government: it would prove that any party prepared to “accept October”—the Bolshevik coup—was welcome. Still more valuable was the ability of the Left SRs to provide the Bolsheviks entry to the peasantry, with whose organizations they had no contact. Since it was absurd to pretend to the status of a government of “workers and peasants” without any peasant representatives, the Left SR access to the peasantry was a considerable asset. Lenin had great hopes (unrealistic, as events were to show) that the Left SRs would split the peasant vote for the Constituent Assembly and possibly give the Bolsheviks and their allies a majority.

  The two parties negotiated in secret. On November 18, Izvestiia announced—prematurely, it turned out—that agreement had been reached with the Left SRs on their entry into the Sovnarkom. But the talks went on for three more weeks, in the course of which the two parties established a close working relationship. The Left SRs now joined forces with the Bolsheviks and helped them destroy the independent peasant movement dominated by the Socialists-Revolutionaries.

  The Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, which represented four-fifths of Russia’s population, rejected the October coup. It sent no delegates to the Second Congress of Soviets, joining instead the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution. This opposition was awkward for the Bolsheviks; they had to win over the Peasants’ Congress or, failing that, replace it with another body, friendly to them. Their strategy, which they subsequently repeated in regard to the Constituent Assembly and other democratic but anti-Bolshevik representative bodies, involved three steps. First, they sought to gain control of a given body’s Mandate Commission, which determined who could attend: this enabled them to bring in more Bolshevik and pro-Bolshevik deputies than they would have obtained in free elections. If such a body, packed with their followers, nevertheless failed to pass Bolshevik resolutions, they disrupted it with noise and threats of violence. If that method also failed, then they declared the meeting unlawful, walked out, and set up a rival meeting of their own.

  As the elections to the Constituent Assembly, held in the second half of November, would demonstrate, the Bolsheviks enjoyed no support in the rural areas. This bode ill for their prospects at the Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, scheduled for the end of November, where the SRs were certain to pass resolutions denouncing the Bolshevik dictatorship. To prevent this, the Bolsheviks, helped by the Left SRs, tried to manipulate the Mandate Commission demanding that the delegates to the congress, ordinarily elected by provincial and district soviets, be augmented with representatives from military units. This demand had no justification, since the military already were represented in the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet. But the SRs on the Mandate Commission, eager to placate the Bolsheviks, agreed: as a result, instead of completely dominating the Peasants’ Congress, they had to make do with a bare majority. The final tally of deputies to the Peasants’ Congress showed 789 delegates, of whom 489 were bona fide peasant representatives, chosen by the rural soviets, and 294 were men in uniform handpicked by the Bolsheviks and Left SRs from the garrisons of Petrograd and vicinity. The party affiliation showed 307 SRs and 91 Bolsheviks; the affiliation of the remaining 391 was not stated, but judging by subsequent voting results, a high proportion of them were Left SRs.*

  In yet another conciliatory gesture, the SR leadership agreed to giving the chairmanship of the congress to Maria Spiridonova, the leader of the Left SRs. Although the peasants indeed idolized her for her terrorist exploits before the Revolution, it was an ill-considered concession because the impulsive Spiridonova was completely manipulated by the Bolsheviks.

  The Second Congress of Peasants’ Deputies opened in Petrograd on November 26 in the Alexander
Hall of the Municipal Duma. From the outset, Bolshevik deputies, cheered on by the Left SRs, engaged in disruptive tactics, hooting, screaming, and shouting down speakers from rival parties; for a while they physically occupied the rostrum. The disturbance forced Spiridonova on several occasions to declare a recess.

  The critical session took place on December 2. On that day, several SR speakers protested the arrest and harassment of delegates to the Constituent Assembly, some of whom were also elected to the Peasants’ Congress. During one of these speeches, Lenin appeared. An SR, pointing at him, shouted to the Bolsheviks: “You will bring Russia to the point where Nicholas will be replaced by Lenin. We need no autocratic authority. We need the rule of soviets!” Lenin asked to speak in his capacity as head of state, but he was told that since no one had elected him, he could only have the floor as head of the Bolshevik Party. His address denigrated the Constituent Assembly and dismissed complaints of Bolshevik harassment of its deputies. Lenin promised, however, that the Assembly would meet when a quorum of 400 deputies had gathered in Petrograd.

  When he left, Chernov moved a resolution which rejected the Bolshevik claim that to acknowledge the authority of the Constituent Assembly was tantamount to rejecting the soviets:

  The congress believes that the soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies, as the ideological and political guides of the masses, should be the strong combat points of the Revolution standing guard over the conquests of peasants and workers. With its legislative creativity, the Constituent Assembly must translate into life the aspirations of the masses, as expressed by the soviets. In consequence, the congress protests against the attempts of individual groups to pit the soviets and the Constituent Assembly against each other.

  †

  The Bolsheviks and Left SRs introduced a counterresolution which called on the congress to approve the Bolshevik measures against the Kadets and some other deputies to the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that the Assembly did not enjoy parliamentary immunity.69

  Chernov’s resolution carried, 360–321. The Bolsheviks persuaded Spiridonova to set this vote aside: on the following day she declared that it had not been a binding vote, but only the “basis” for one. Before this matter could be cleared up, Trotsky made an appearance and asked for the floor to report on the progress of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The diversionary move was greeted with hoots, whereupon Trotsky departed, followed by the Bolshevik and Left SR delegates.

  The following day, December 4, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs returned to the Alexander Hall and renewed disruptive tactics. In the resulting bedlam no speaker could be heard, whereupon the SRs and their adherents, singing the “Marseillaise,” walked out. They resumed deliberations at the Agricultural Museum on the Fontanka, the seat of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Peasants’ Deputies. From this moment, the “right” and “left” wings of the congress met separately: attempts to reunite them failed due to the Bolshevik refusal to acknowledge the validity of the December 2 vote on the Constituent Assembly. On December 6, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs declared their sessions at the Municipal Duma to be the only legitimate spokesman for the peasant soviets, although in fact there were no representatives of peasant soviets present. They denied all authority to the Central Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Congress, divested it of its technical apparatus and personnel, and stopped the per diems which the peasants’ deputies were paid by the government. Finally, on December 8, the Bolshevik and Left SR rump Congress of Peasants’ Deputies fused with the Bolshevik-controlled AU-Russian Central Executive Committee.

  Thus, the Bolsheviks took over the Peasants’ Congress, first by introducing into it deputies whom they, not the peasants, had chosen, and then by declaring these deputies to be the sole legitimate representatives of the peasantry. They could not have accomplished this without the collaboration of the Left SRs. As a reward for this service, and in anticipation of further services, the Bolsheviks made major concessions to the Left SRs to bring them into the government as junior partners.

  The two parties reached agreement on the night of December 9–10, immediately after liquidating jointly the Peasants’ Congress.70 Its terms have never been published and have to be reconstructed from subsequent events. The Left SRs posed several conditions: lifting the Press Decree, inclusion of other socialist parties in the government, abolition of the Cheka, prompt convocation of the Constituent Assembly. On the first demand, the Bolsheviks yielded in effect by allowing all sorts of hostile newspapers to appear, without formally repealing the Press Decree. On the second issue, Lenin proved conciliatory: he merely asked that the other socialist parties follow the example of the Left SRs and acknowledge the October Revolution. Since no party was inclined to do that, this particular concession cost him nothing. On the Cheka, the Bolsheviks stood firm: they would neither do away with it nor formally circum-scribe its authority—the counterrevolution did not permit such luxury—but the Left SRs could have representatives in the Cheka Collegium to satisfy themselves there was no unnecessary terror. On the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks reluctantly granted the Left SR demand. It is virtually certain that it is Left SR insistence that made the Bolsheviks give up the idea of annulling the elections and to allow it to meet, if only briefly. Trotsky recalls Lenin saying: “Of course, we must disperse the Constituent Assembly, but what is to be done about the Left SRs?”71

  On the basis of these compromises, the Left SRs joined the Sovnarkom, where they were given five portfolios: Agriculture, Justice, Post and Telegraphs, Interior, and Local Self-Government. They were also admitted in subordinate capacities into other state institutions, including the Cheka, where the Left SR Petr Aleksandrovich Dmitrievskii (Aleksandrovich) took over as Dzerzhinskii’s deputy. The Left SRs found this arrangement satisfactory: they liked the Bolsheviks and approved of their objectives, even if they thought them a bit hotheaded. The Left SR V. A. Karelin defined his party as “a regulator moderating the excessive zeal of the Bolsheviks.”72

  The disruption of the Second Peasants’ Congress by the joint action of Bolsheviks and Left SRs spelled the demise of independent peasant organizations in Russia. In the middle of January 1918, the Bolshevik–Left SR Executive Committee of the self-styled Peasants’ Congress convened a Third Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, fully under their control. It was scheduled to meet concurrently with the Third Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies: on this occasion, the two institutions, heretofore separate, “merged” and the Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies added “Peasants’ Deputies” to its designation. This event, according to one Bolshevik historian, “completed the process of creating a single supreme organ of Soviet authority” and “put an end to the Right SR policy of running the Peasants’ Congress apart from the Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”73 It would be more accurate, however, to say that this shotgun marriage put an end to the peasantry’s self-government and completed the process of its disenfranchisement.

  To free themselves completely from democratic control, they had one more hurdle to overcome: the Constituent Assembly, which, according to one contemporary, “stuck like a bone” in their throat.74

  By early December, the Bolsheviks had succeeded in (1) shunting aside the legitimate All-Russian Congress of Soviets and unseating its Executive Committee, (2) depriving the executive organ of the soviets of control over legislation and senior appointments, and (3) splitting the legitimate Peasants’ Congress and replacing it with a handpicked body of soldiers and sailors. They could get away with such subversive acts because they involved manipulation of institutions in faraway Petrograd which the country at large could not easily either follow or understand. But the Constituent Assembly was another matter. This body, chosen by the entire nation, was to be the first truly representative gathering in Russian history. To prevent it from meeting or dispersing it would constitute the most audacious coup d’état of all, a direct challenge t
o the nation’s will, the disenfranchisement of tens of millions. And yet, until and unless this was done, the Bolsheviks could not feel secure because their legitimacy, grounded in the resolutions of the Second Congress of Soviets, was conditional on the approval of the Assembly—approval which it was certain to deny them.

  To make matters still worse, the Bolsheviks had on many occasions committed themselves to the convocation of the Assembly. Historically, the Constituent Assembly was identified with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which made it the centerpiece of its political program, confident that given its hold on the peasants it would enjoy in it an overwhelming majority: this the SRs intended to use to transform Russian into a republic of “toilers.” Had they been politically more astute, the SRs would have pressed the Provisional Government to hold elections as soon as possible. But they procrastinated like everyone else, which handed the Bolsheviks the opportunity to pose as the Assembly’s champions. From the late summer of 1917, the Bolsheviks accused the Provisional Government of deliberately delaying the elections in the hope that time would cool the people’s revolutionary ardor. In launching the slogan “All Power to the Soviets,” they argued that only the soviets could guarantee the Constituent Assembly. In September and October 1917 Bolshevik propaganda shouted loud and clear that the transfer of power to the soviets alone would save the Constituent Assembly.75 As they prepared to seize power, they sometimes sounded as if their main objective was to defend the Assembly from the designs of the “bourgeoisie” and other “counterrevolutionaries.” As late as October 27, Pravda told its readers that

  the new revolutionary authority will permit no hesitations: under conditions of social hegemony of the interests of the broad popular masses, it alone is capable of leading the country to a Constituent Assembly.