Thankyou very much everyone. I appreciate the kind words and comments.
Part II:
The Rise of the Bolsheviks
It was the nature of Russian society that, when the Romanov autocracy fell, it was replaced not by one successor, but two. The Provisional Government drew its members mostly from the Duma. The aim of the Provisional Government was to establish Russia as a true parliamentary democracy. From the very outset, the democratic minded Provisional Government was shadowed by the soviets (councils), repositories of the workers’ dreams and aspirations since the heady days of the 1905 revolution. As soon as the end of the monarchy appeared immanent, workers and soldiers carried out hasty elections in their factories and regiments, and sent delegates to the Tauride Palace. What they were there to do there was not obvious. None of them thought they should try to rule the nation. On the other hand, they were an unmistakeable token that the opinions of the people could no longer be ignored. Soon, soviets were being set up across the great Russian nation, in towns of all sizes and often in villages too.
For all that it was “provisional,” the new government did have an agenda of its own, which was to repudiate the heritage of the old Romanov regime. It dissolved the tsarist security police and purged the ordinary police of all high ranking officers who had served the old regime. At the same time, the Provisional Government announced that Russian citizens would enjoy civil rights, while non-Russian nationalities within the borders of the old Russian Empire would decide how the rule themselves, under the guidance of a decentralised federal government. Russia was to become the “freest nation in the world.”
Prince Lvov, the Premier of the Provisional Government, realised that his new regime desperately required the support of the soviets, and one of his first steps was to reach an understanding with them. Its cardinal element was an agreement to continue the war against Germany on a new basis, a defensive operation until a peace agreement could be settled without annexations or indemnities. Both Prince Lvov and Alexander Kerenskii, (who replaced Lvov as Premier in July) hoped that this agreement between the government and the soviets would facilitate the emergence of a new style of Russian patriotism which would unite the
norad (the “ordinary” people; peasants, workers and soldiers) and the
obshchestvenmost (the middle classes). The two, however, proved to be too far apart in outlook and mentality . In defending the new alliance with the
obshchestvenmost, the two most powerful Socialist parties, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) alienated themselves from their popular base and split internally, paving the way for the Bolsheviks, who took on the aspirations of the
norad, acknowledging no responsibility for law and order.
* * *
The incipient alliance between the
norad and the
obshchestvenmost broke down from pressure from below. The parties involved in the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet were discredited for supporting the alliance and trying to make it work. The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, were well placed to take advantage of this breakdown. Contrary to popular belief, the Bolsheviks played only a marginal role in the development of the revolution before August 1917. On the eve of the fall of Nicholas II, the party’s membership numbered less than 30, 000. Although membership soon expanded, the Bolsheviks continued to fall behind their influential rivals, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, the two parties which dominated the soviets. Nonetheless, there was a difference between the Bolshevik’s position in 1905, when they played a similar marginal role, and their position in 1917. The difference was Lenin’s conviction that this time he could see how to harness the revolutionary flood and prevent it from running in to the sand.
Neither Lenin and the Bolsheviks, nor the other socialist parties ‘made’ the revolution; they did not create the grievances of the peasants, the more recent anger of the workers against exploitation, or the war-weariness of the soldiers and the nation. But, where the other parties failed to respond decisively to these mass discontents, Lenin showed a genius for finding slogans - peace, land, bread, worker’s control - “to catalyse the grievances of the people into revolutionary energy capable of changing the face of the nation for the better.” Lenin’s original idea that the revolution would be carried out by a tightly disciplined party of intellectuals directing the workers was pushed aside by events. Instead the Bolsheviks rode to power on the crest of a groundswell generated by the mass of the people; full time party members took over and steered as best they could the institutions created by the peasants, workers and people. Within just a few months, the Bolsheviks had become the most influential of the socialist parties. Support for the Mensheviks and SRs eroded as the Bolsheviks cunningly attacked and discredited their cooperation with the
obshchestvenmost. In the people’s minds, the Bolsheviks became the protectors of the revolution, while the others had betrayed them by allying with the liberals and the “greedy, profiteering bourgeois.”
The instrument of seizure of power in Petrograd, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), was created not by the Bolsheviks, but by the Petrograd Soviet as a whole, to organise the defence of the capital against a military coup or a German attack. From 20 October the MRC began taking control of strategic points in the city in order to ensure that the Provisional Government did not prevent the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets from meeting. The final operation was launched when Premier Kerenskii tried to close Bolshevik newspapers and arrest leading Bolsheviks. Most participants in the rising thought that they were fighting for “All Power to the Soviets,” to be embodied in the form of a socialist coalition government which would endorse the workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ assemblies across the country. In dramatic fashion, the Winter Palace was stormed by passionate revolutionaries, propelled forward by Bolshevik propaganda. Premier Kerenskii was imprisoned, along with leading members of the
obshchestvenmost.
With the Provisional Government pushed aside, the Congress of Soviets was able to take place unhindered. At the Congress, Lenin was unexpectedly able to set up a single party Bolshevik government (the “Council of People’s Commissars,” or Sovnarkom) because by then, the Bolsheviks had secured the support of a sizeable contingent of SR delegates, who had revolted against their leadership. This group of SR delegates formed the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and gave Lenin their vital support during the Congress. By contrast, the remaining SRs along with the Mensheviks, walked out of the Congress, declaring that the Bolsheviks had usurped power which belonged to the people and to all the socialist parties.
In most localities the Bolsheviks were able to seize power in similar ways. Where they were popular, they used their majority to dominate local soviets; where they were less popular, they set up armed militia to coerce or replace the local soviet and enforced “All power to the Soviets” on their own terms. Within a few months, wherever they held power, the Bolsheviks consolidated their control by closing down anti-Bolshevik and non-socialist newspapers. Furthermore, Lenin established a highly organised and ruthless police force known as the
Cheka, or Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Speculation and Counterrevolution. The Bolsheviks allowed popular elections to the Constituent Assembly, but when it became clear that the SR would be the single largest party with the assembly, Lenin simply dissolved it. With its destruction, the form of a democratisation that the
obshchestvenmost and most other socialist parties had worked towards for decades was in ruins under the Bolshevik boot. The feeble but emerging civil institutions of late Imperial Russia were ruthlessly destroyed, and the way was clear for the Bolsheviks to impose their own blueprint on society.
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks
