The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  A member of the Constituent Assembly, belonging to the SR faction, exclaims from his seat: “Comrades, it is now 4 p.m., we suggest that the oldest member open the meeting of the Constituent Assembly.” (Loud noise on the left, applause in the center and on the right, whistles on the left.… Inaudible.… Loud noise and whistles continue on the left and applause on the right.) The oldest member of the Constituent Assembly, Mikhailov, ascends [the podium].

  Mikhailov rings. (Noise on the left. Voice: “Down with the usurper!” Continuing noise and whistles on the left, applause on the right.)

  Mikhailov: “I declare an intermission.”

  124

  The Bolsheviks pursued a simple strategy. They would confront the Assembly with a resolution that would, in effect, delegitimize it: in the almost certain event that it failed, they would walk out, and without formally disbanding it, make further work by the Assembly impossible. Following this plan, F. F. Raskolnikov, the Bolshevik ensign from Kronshtadt, moved a motion. Although called “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses,” unlike its 1789 prototype, it had more to say about duties than rights: it was here that the Bolsheviks introduced the universal labor obligation. Russia was proclaimed a “republic of soviets” and a number of measures which the Bolsheviks had previously passed were reconfirmed, among them the Land Decree, worker control over production, and the nationalization of banks. The critical article asked the Assembly to renounce its authority to legislate—the very authority for the sake of which it had been elected. “The Constituent Assembly concedes,” it read, “that its tasks are confined to working out in general the fundamental bases of reorganizing society on a socialist basis.” The Assembly was to ratify all the decrees previously issued by the Sovnarkom and then adjourn.125

  Raskolnikov’s motion lost 237–136: the vote indicates that all the Bolshevik delegates, but only they, voted in favor; the Left SRs apparently abstained. At this point, the Bolshevik delegation declared the Assembly to be controlled by “counterrevolutionaries” and walked out. The Left SRs kept their seats for the time being.

  Lenin stayed in his loge until 10 p.m., when he, too, departed: he had not addressed the Assembly, so as not to give it any semblance of legitimacy. The Bolshevik Central Committee now met in another part of the palace and adopted a resolution dissolving the Assembly. Out of deference to the Left SRs, however, Lenin instructed the Taurida Guard not to use violence: any deputy who wished to leave the building was to be let go, but no one was to be allowed back in.126 At 2 a.m., satisfied that the situation was under control, he returned to Smolnyi.

  After the Bolsheviks had departed, Taurida resounded with interminable speeches, frequently disrupted by the guards who had descended from the balcony and filled the seats vacated by the Bolsheviks: many of them were drunk. Some soldiers amused themselves by aiming guns at the speakers. At 2:30 a.m. the Left SRs walked out, at which point commissar P. E. Dybenko, who was in charge of security, ordered the commander of the guard, a sailor, the anarchist A. G. Zhelezniakov, to close the meeting. Shortly after 4 a.m., as the chairman, Victor Chernov, was proclaiming the abolition of property in land, Zhelezniakov mounted the tribune and touched him on the back.* The following scene ensued, as recorded in the minutes:

  Citizen Sailor: “I have been instructed to inform you that all those present should leave the Assembly Hall because the guard is tired.”

  Chairman: “What instruction? From whom?”

  Citizen Sailor: “I am the commander of the Taurida Guard. I have an instruction from the commissar.”

  Chairman: “The members of the Constituent Assembly are also tired, but no fatigue can disrupt our proclaiming a law awaited by all of Russia.”

  (Loud noise. Voices: “Enough, enough!”)

  Chairman: “The Constituent Assembly can disperse only under the threat of force.”

  (Noise.)

  Chairman: “You declare it.”

  (Voices: “Down with Chernov!”)

  Citizen Sailor: “I request that the Assembly Hall be immediately vacated.”

  *

  79. Victor Chernov.

  While this exchange was taking place more Bolshevik troops crowded into the Assembly Hall, looking very menacing. Chernov managed to keep the meeting going for another twenty minutes, and then adjourned it until 5 p.m. that day (January 6). But the Assembly was not to reconvene, for in the morning Sverdlov had the CEC ratify the Bolshevik resolution dissolving it.127Pravda on that day appeared with banner headlines:

  THE HIRELINGS OF BANKERS, CAPITALISTS, AND LANDLORDS, THE ALLIES OF KALEDIN, DUTOV, THE SLAVES OF THE AMERICAN DOLLAR, THE BACKSTAB-BERS—THE RIGHT SR’S—DEMAND IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY ALL POWER FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR MASTERS—ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

  .

  THEY PAY LIP SERVICE TO POPULAR DEMANDS FOR LAND, PEACE, AND [WORKER] CONTROL, BUT IN REALITY THEY TRY TO FASTEN A NOOSE AROUND THE NECK OF SOCIALIST AUTHORITY AND REVOLUTION

  .

  BUT THE WORKERS, PEASANTS, AND SOLDIERS WILL NOT FALL FOR THE BAIT OF LIES OF THE MOST EVIL ENEMIES OF SOCIALISM. IN THE NAME OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AND THE SOCIALIST SOVIET REPUBLIC THEY WILL SWEEP AWAY ITS OPEN AND HIDDEN KILLERS.

  128

  The Bolsheviks had previously linked Russian democratic forces with “capitalists,” “landlords,” and “counterrevolutionaries,” but in this headline they for the first time connected them also with foreign capital.

  Two days later (January 8) the Bolsheviks opened their counter-Assembly, labeled “Third Congress of Soviets.” Here no one could obstruct them because they had reserved for themselves and the Left SRs 94 percent of the seats,129 more than three times what they were entitled to, judging by the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The little left over they allocated to the opposition socialists—just enough to have a target for abuse and ridicule. The congress duly passed all the measures submitted to it by government spokesmen, including the “Declaration of Rights.” Russia became a “Federation of Soviet Republics,” to be known as the “Russian Soviet Socialist Republic,” which name she retained until 1924, when she was renamed “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The congress acknowledged the Sovnarkom as the country’s legitimate governhient, removing from its name the adjective “provisional.” It also approved the principle of universal labor obligation.

  The dissolution of the Assembly met with surprising indifference: there was none of the fury which in 1789 had greeted rumors that Louis XVI intended to dissolve the National Assembly, precipitating the assault on the Bastille. After a year of anarchy, Russians were exhausted: they yearned for peace and order, no matter how purchased. The Bolsheviks had gambled on that mood and won. After January 5, no one could any longer believe that Lenin’s men could be talked into abandoning power. And since there was no effective armed opposition to them in the central regions of Russia, and what there was the socialist intelligentsia refused to use, common sense dictated that the Bolshevik dictatorship was here to stay.

  An immediate result was the collapse of the strike of white-collar personnel in the ministries and private enterprises, who drifted back to work after January 5, some driven by personal need, others in the belief that they would be better able to influence events from the inside. The psychology of the opposition now suffered a fatal break: it is as if brutality and the disregard of the nation’s will legitimized the Bolshevik dictatorship. The country at large felt that after a year of chaos, it at last had a “real” government. This certainly held true of the peasant and worker masses but, paradoxically, also of the well-to-do and conservative elements, Pravda’s “hyenas of capital” and “enemies of the people,” who despised the socialist intelligentsia and street mobs even more than they did the Bolsheviks.* In a sense the Bolsheviks may be said to have become the government of Russia not so much in October 1917 as in January 1918. In the words of one contemporary, “authentic, genuine Bolshevism, the Bolshevism of the broad masses, came only after Januar
y 5.”130

  Indeed, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was in many respects more important for the future of Russia than the October coup which had been carried out behind the smoke screen of “All Power to the Soviets.” If the purpose of October remained concealed from nearly everyone, including rank-and-file Bolsheviks, there could be no doubt about Bolshevik intentions after January 5, when they had made it unmistakably clear they intended to pay no heed to popular opinion. They did not have to listen to the voice of the people because, in the literal sense of the word, they were the “people.”** In the words of Lenin, “The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by Soviet authority [was] the complete and open liquidation of formal democracy in the name of the revolutionary dictatorship.”131

  The response to this historic event on the part of the population at large and the intelligentsia augured ill for the country’s future. Russia, events confirmed once again, lacked a sense of national cohesion capable of inspiring the population to give up immediate and personal interests for the sake of the common good. The “popular masses” demonstrated that they understood only private and regional interests, the heady joys of the duvan, which were satisfied, for the time being, by the soviets and factory committees. In accord with the Russian proverb “He who grabs the stick is corporal,” they conceded power to the boldest and most ruthless claimant.

  The evidence indicates that the industrial workers of Petrograd, even as they voted for the Bolshevik ticket, had expected the Assembly to meet and give shape to the country’s new political and social system. This is confirmed by their signatures on the various petitions of the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, Pravda’s complaints about workers’ support for it,132 and the frenetic appeals combined with threats which the Bolsheviks directed at the workers on the eve of the Assembly’s convocation. And yet, when confronted with the unflinching determination of the regime to liquidate the Assembly, backed with guns that did not hesitate to fire, the workers folded. Was it because they were betrayed by the intelligentsia, which urged them not to resist? If that was the case, then the role of intellectuals in the revolution against tsarism stands out in bold relief: without their prodding, it seems, Russian workers would not stand up to the government.

  As for the peasants, they could not care less what went on in the big city. SR agitators told them to vote, so they voted; and if some other group of “white hands” took over, what difference did it make? Their concerns did not extend beyond the boundaries of their volosti.

  That left the socialist intelligentsia, which, having gained a solid electoral victory, could act in confidence that the country was behind it. It was doomed by the refusal under any circumstances to resort to force against the Bolsheviks. Trotsky later taunted socialist intellectuals that they had come to Taurida Palace with candles, in case the Bolsheviks cut off power, and with sandwiches, in case they were deprived of food.133 But they would not carry guns. On the eve of the convocation of the Assembly, the SR Pitirim Sorokin (later professor of sociology at Harvard), discussing the possibility of its being dispersed by force, predicted: “If the opening session is met with ‘machine guns,’ we will issue an appeal to the country informing it of this, and place ourselves under the protection of the people.”134 But they lacked the courage even for such a gesture. When, following the dissolution of the Assembly, soldiers approached socialist deputies with the offer to restore it by force of arms, the horrified intellectuals begged them to do nothing of the kind: Tsereteli said that it would be better for the Constituent Assembly to die a quiet death than to provoke a civil war.135 Such people no one could risk following: they talked endlessly of revolution and democracy, but would not defend their ideals with anything other than words and gestures. This contradictory behavior, this inertia disguised as submission to the forces of history, this unwillingness to fight and win, is not easy to explain. Perhaps its rationale has to be sought in the realm of psychology—namely, the traditional attitude of the old Russian intelligentsia so well depicted by Chekhov, with its dread of success and belief that inefficiency was “the cardinal virtue and defeat the only halo.”136

  The capitulation of the socialist intelligentsia on January 5 was the beginning of its demise. “The inability to defend the Constituent Assembly marked the most profound crisis of Russian democracy,” observed a man who had tried and failed to organize armed resistance. “It was the turning point. After January 5 there was no place in history, in Russian history, for what had been the idealistically dedicated Russian intelligentsia. It was relegated to the past.”137

  Unlike their opponents, the Bolsheviks learned a great deal from these events. They understood that in areas under their control they need fear no organized armed resistance: their rivals, though supported by at least three-fourths of the population, were disunited, leaderless, and, above all, unwilling to fight. This experience accustomed the Bolsheviks to resort to violence as a matter of course whenever they ran into resistance, to “solve” their problems by physically annihilating those who caused them. The machine gun became for them the principal instrument of political persuasion. The unrestrained brutality with which they henceforth ruled Russia stemmed in large measure from the knowledge, gained on January 5, that they could use it with impunity.

  And they had to resort to brutality more and more often, for only a few months after they had assumed power their base of support began to erode: had they relied on popular backing, they would have gone the way of the Provisional Government. The industrial workers, who in the fall, along with the garrison troops, had been their strongest supporters, grew disenchanted very quickly. The change of mood had diverse causes, but the principal one was the worsening food situation. The government, having forbidden all private trade in cereals and bread, paid the peasant such absurdly low prices that he either hoarded the grain or disposed of it on the black market. The government did not obtain enough foodstuffs to supply the urban population with anything but the barest minimum: in the winter of 1917–18, the bread ration in Petrograd fluctuated between four and six ounces a day. On the black market, a pound of bread fetched from three to five rubles, which placed it out of the reach of ordinary people. There was massive industrial unemployment as well, caused mainly by fuel shortages: in May 1918 only 12–13 percent of the Petrograd labor force still held jobs.138

  To escape starvation and cold, thousands of city inhabitants fled to the countryside, where they had relatives and the food and fuel situation was better. Due to this exodus, by April 1918 the labor force in Petrograd declined to 57 percent of what it had been on the eve of the February Revolution.139 Those who stayed behind, hungry, cold, often idle, seethed with discontent. They resented Bolshevik economic policies which had produced this state of affairs, but they also objected to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the humiliating peace treaty with the Central Powers (signed in March 1918), the high-handed behavior of Bolshevik commissars, and the scandalous corruption of officials on all but the highest levels of government.

  This development had dangerous implications for the Bolsheviks, the more so in that the armed forces on which they had previously relied were all but gone as spring approached. The soldiers who did not return home formed marauding bands that terrorized the population and sometimes assaulted soviet officials.

  The growing mood of disenchantment and the feeling that they could not obtain redress from existing institutions, firmly in Bolshevik hands, prompted the Petrograd workers to create new institutions, independent of the Bolsheviks and the bodies (soviets, trade unions, Factory Committees) which they controlled. On January 5/18, 1918—the day the Constituent Assembly opened—representatives or “plenipotentiaries” of Petrograd factories met to discuss the current situation. Some speakers referred to a “break” in worker attitudes.140 In February, these plenipotentiaries began to hold regular meetings. Incomplete evidence indicates one such meeting in March, four in April, three in May, and three in June. The March meeting of del
egates representing fifty-six factories, for which records exist,141 heard strong anti-Bolshevik language. It protested that the government, while claiming to rule on behalf of workers and peasants, exercised autocratic authority and refused to hold new elections to the soviets. It called for a rejection of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the dissolution of the Sovnarkom, and the immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

  On March 31 the Bolsheviks had the Cheka search the headquarters of the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries and impound the literature found there. Otherwise they did not interfere as yet, probably from fear of provoking worker unrest.

  Aware that the urban workers were turning against them, the Bolsheviks delayed holding soviet elections. When some independent soviets did so anyway, producing non-Bolshevik majorities, they disbanded them by force. The inability to use the soviets compounded the workers’ frustration. In early May, many concluded that they had to take matters into their own hands.

  On May 8, massive worker assemblies were held at the Putilov and Obukhov plants to discuss the two most burning issues: food and politics. At Putilov, over 10,000 workers heard denunciations of the government. Bolshevik speakers were given a hostile reception and their resolutions went down in defeat. The meeting demanded the “immediate unification of all socialist and democratic forces,” the lifting of restrictions on free trade in bread, fresh elections to the Constituent Assembly, and reelections to the Petrograd Soviet by secret ballot.142 Obukhov workers passed, with a virtually unanimous vote, a similar resolution.143

  The next day an event occurred at Kolpino, an industrial town south of Petrograd, which added fuel to growing worker discontent. Kolpino had been especially badly served by government supply agencies: and with only 300 of the city’s work force of 10,000 employed, few had money to buy food on the black market. A further delay in food deliveries provoked the women to call a city-wide protest. The Bolshevik commissar lost his head and ordered troops to fire on the demonstrators. In the ensuing panic the impression spread that there were numerous dead, although, as transpired later, there was only one fatality and six injured.144 By standards of the time, nothing extraordinary: but Petrograd workers needed little cause to give vent to pent-up anger.