"Great October Socialist Revolution" or Bolshevik coup?

The Russian Revolution
1815-1924
Great October; April, 1917-January, 1918

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Major Topics

• Introduction: The Hero in History
• The Sealed Train
• July Days
• Kornilov
• Great October Socialist Revolution
• Land! Peace! Bread!
• The Death of Constitutionalism


Sidney Hook. The Hero in History. 1940


The Soviet Holy Trinity


The Word Made Flesh


“Christ has died, Christ is risen…”


“Christ has died, Christ is risen…”
LENIN-
LIVED,
LENIN-
LIVES,
LENIN-
SHALL LIVE!


“Great Men” versus “Blind Forces”


•April Theses


•April Theses

• July Days


•April Theses

• July Days

•Red October


•April Theses

• July Days

•Red October

•Brest-Litovsk


One need not believe that history is made by “great men” to
appreciate the immense importance of Lenin for the Russian
Revolution and the regime that emerged from it...the regime that he
established in October 1917 institutionalized, as it were, his
personality….Communist Russia, therefore, was throughout its
seventy-four years to an unusual extent the embodiment of the mind
and psyche of one man…

Pipes, p. 101


THE PARTY
MIND,
HONOR
& CONSCIENCE
OF OUR
EPOCH


The Sealed Train


The locomotive
which brought the
The Sealed Train “Bolshevik
bacillus”
across Germany


1920 photo of Lenin’s Zurich tenement


Lenin Hits Bottom
The war years were for Lenin and Krupskaya a time of
severe trials, a time of poverty and isolation from Russia.
They lived in quarters that bordered on slums, took their
meals in the company of prostitutes and criminals, and
found themselves abandoned by many past followers who
had come to regard Lenin as a dangerous fanatic. The only
shaft of light for Lenin during this dark period was his love
aﬀair with Inessa Armand, the daughter of two music hall
artists and the wife of a wealthy Russian. She had met
Lenin in Paris in 1910 and soon became his mistress under
the tolerant eye of Krupskaya. Armand seems to have been
the only human being with whom Lenin ever established
true intimacy.
Pipes, p. 112

For all his talk of civil war, Lenin had little faith in the imminence
of revolution. Addressing a gathering of socialist youths in Zurich
on January of 9/22 1917, he predicted that while Europe would not
escape social upheaval, “we old-timers perhaps shall not live [to
see] the decisive battles of the looming revolution.”

Seven weeks later, tsarism collapsed.
Pipes, p. 113


“There is a tide...


“There is a tide...

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the ﬂood, leads on
to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in
miseries.

Julius Cæsar. Act i. Sc. 3.


The Parvus Puzzle
• born in the shtetl Berezino, raised in Odessa, began
associating with The Bund

• 1886-age 19, ﬂed the pogroms to Zurich

• 1891-PhD in philosophy, Marxist, emigrated to
Germany, joined the SPD, befriended fellow
emigreRosa Luxemburg

• 1900-meets Lenin in Munich, encourages the
publication of Iskra

• 1904-predicts Russia would lose the war with Japan,
German intelligence recruits him to work against
Imperial Russia
born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand
( Израиль Лазаревич Гельфанд)
1867-1924
• 1905-arrives in Skt-Peterburg with false papers, tries Revolutionary nom de guerre
to engineer ﬁnancial collapse, exiled to Siberia PARVUS


The Strategy of “Permanent Revolution”

The ﬁnal act of the 1905 Revolution was played out in Moscow. On
December 6, the Moscow Soviet, dominated by the Bolsheviks, called
for an armed uprising to overthrow the tsarist government, convene a
Constituent Assembly, and proclaim a democratic republic. The
strategy behind this action, which came to be known as one of
“permanent revolution,” was formulated by Alexander Helphand ….
Parvus argued that socialists should not allow the ﬁrst stage of the
Revolution to solidify “bourgeois” rule but proceed at once to the
next, socialist phase. Witte ruthlessly crushed the Moscow uprising….

Pipes, pp. 43-44


Does Parvus finance Lenin’s return?

• 1906-all three Siberian prisoners,
pictured here, escaped to the West;
Parvus to Germany, Trotsky to NYC

• Parvus arranges to produce Maxim
Gorky’s play, The Lower Depths, with
profits divided between Gorky & the
RSDLP. He is accused of pocketing
the proceeds

• during the Balkan wars he is an agent
for Germany in Istanbul. He also
Parvus (left) with fellow Siberian exiles, profits as an arms merchant for Krupp
Lev Bronstein (Trotsky) & Lev Deich
& Vickers Ltd
(Leo Deutch) a Menshevik leader

• 1915-he convinces German intelligence
to support the Russian emigres


The support that nearly all European socialist parties gave their
national governments at the outbreak of war unquestionably
betrayed their solemn [paciﬁst] pledges...provoked a crisis within
the international socialist movement….
[There was a] pro-war majority against a minority with strong
Russian representation, which demanded an instant suspension of
hostilities. Lenin headed the extreme wing of that minority in that
instead of calling for immediate peace, he insisted that the
war between nations be transformed into a war between
classes [even though civil war at home entailed military
defeat by Germany].


Lenin’s anti-Russian propaganda, his open endorsement of
Russia’s defeat, attracted the attention of the German
government. One of its experts on Russian aﬀairs was Alexander
Helphand-Parvus….After the outbreak of the war, he argued that
the interests of Russian revolutionaries and those of the German
government coincided….In 1915 he contacted Lenin in Zurich,
but at that point Lenin rejected his advances. [Lenin] agreed,
however, in return for ﬁnancial help, to supply another German
agent...with reports on internal conditions in Russia sent to him
by his followers there. These activities, as well as his relations
with the Austrian government, constituted high treason and
Lenin maintained about them to the end of his life complete
silence. They only came to light after German and Austrian
archives were thrown open.

Pipes, p.111


[In 1917, after the February Revolution] the principal proponent of
the “Lenin card” was Parvus….With extraordinary foresight he
predicted that once Lenin returned home he would topple the
Provisional Government, take charge, and conclude a separate peace.
He understood Lenin’s lust for power…
At 3:20 p.m. on March 27/April 9, thirty-two Russian émigrés left the
Zurich railway station for the German frontier. Among the
passengers were Lenin, Krupskaya, Grigorii Zinoviev with his wife
and child, and Inessa Armand….
In Stockholm, Parvus awaited them. He asked to meet Lenin, but
Lenin refused, turning him over to Karl Radek …it is virtually
certain that the two worked out the terms of German
support for the Bolsheviks.

Pipes, pp. 115-117


Swiss Communist Fritz Platten, 1883-1942

• after the collapse of the Second
International he joined the Zimmerwald
Movement and became a communist

• he was most famous for arranging the
trip in the sealed train from Zurich to
Stettin, thence by ferry to neutral
Stockholm

• 1919-Platten was active in the
foundation Third (Communist)
International and spent time in the
USSR representing the Swiss CP
Lenin and Platten in 1919
• 1938-arrested in the Stalinist purges,
sent to a camp where he was shot in
1942


The Route of the “Sealed Train”


The Route of the “Sealed Train”

• the trip in the sealed train from Zurich to
Stettin, 

• thence by ferry to neutral Stockholm 

• Swedish communists then arranged the
train trip north to the Swedish-Finland
border 

• through Russian Finland 

• to the Finland Station in Petrograd


The Finland Station


Lenin reads the April Theses
4 April 1917


The April Theses


The April Theses
The April Theses were published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and read by Lenin at two
meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on April 4,
1917. In the Theses, Lenin:


The April Theses
■ Condemns the Provisional Government as bourgeois and urges "no support" for it,
as "the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear." He condemns World War I
as a "predatory imperialist war" and the "revolutionary defensism" of foreign
communist parties, calling for revolutionary defeatism.


The April Theses
■ Asserts that Russia is "passing from the ﬁrst [bourgeois] stage of the revolution
—which, owing to the insuﬃcient class consciousness and organization of the
proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which
must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the
peasants";


The April Theses
peasants";
■ Recognizes that the Bolsheviks are a minority in most of the soviets against a "bloc of all
the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist
Revolutionaries down to the Organizing Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov,
etc., etc., who have yielded to the inﬂuence of the bourgeoisie and spread that inﬂuence
among the proletariat."


The April Theses
peasants";
■ Condemns the establishment of a parliamentary republic. He calls this a "retrograde
step." He instead calls for "a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Laborers'
and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom." [ALL POWER
TO THE SOVIETS, JBP]


The April Theses
peasants";
■ Condemns the establishment of a parliamentary republic. He calls this a "retrograde
step." He instead calls for "a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Laborers'
and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom." [ALL POWER
TO THE SOVIETS, JBP]
■ Calls for "abolition of the police, the army, and the bureaucracy" and for "the
salaries of all oﬃcials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to
exceed the average wage of a competent worker."

The April Theses
Calls for "The weight of emphasis in the agrarian program to be shifted to the Soviets of
Agricultural Laborers' Deputies," conﬁscation of all landed estates," and "nationalization of all
lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Laborers' and
Peasants' Deputies. The organization of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The
setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300
dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies)
under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Laborers' Deputies and for the public account."


The April Theses
■ Calls for "the immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the
institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies."


The April Theses
■ States that "it is not our immediate task to 'introduce' socialism, but only to bring social
production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of
Workers' Deputies."


The April Theses
Workers' Deputies."
■ Lists "party tasks" as "Immediate convocation of a party congress," "alteration of the party
program, mainly: (1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (2) On our attitude
towards the state and our demand for a "commune state," amendment of our out-of-date
minimum program," and change of the Party's name." Lenin notes that "instead of "Social
Democracy," whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to
the bourgeoisie (the 'defencists' and the vacillating 'Kautskyites'), we must call ourselves the
Communist Party." The name change would dissociate the Bolsheviks from the social
democratic parties of Europe supporting participation of their nation in World War I. Lenin first
developed this point in his 1915 pamphlet "Socialism and War," when he first called the pro-war
social-democrats "social chauvinists."


The April Theses
Workers' Deputies."
■ Lists "party tasks" as "Immediate convocation of a party congress," "alteration of the party
program, mainly: (1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (2) On our attitude
towards the state and our demand for a "commune state," amendment of our out-of-date
minimum program," and change of the Party's name." Lenin notes that "instead of "Social
Democracy," whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to
the bourgeoisie (the 'defencists' and the vacillating 'Kautskyites'), we must call ourselves the
Communist Party." The name change would dissociate the Bolsheviks from the social
democratic parties of Europe supporting participation of their nation in World War I. Lenin first
developed this point in his 1915 pamphlet "Socialism and War," when he first called the pro-war
social-democrats "social chauvinists."
■ Calls for a new "revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and
against the 'Center.'" This later became the Comintern (Third International) formed in 1919.


April Riots  Coalition Government



• a disagreement over war aims developed between the government
and the Petrograd Soviet




• the Soviet wanted war till victory but “without annexations and indemnities”





• Foreign Minister Miliukov still wanted the promised Turkish Straits and Constantinople






• this led to street demonstrations by the soldiers brought out by
radical junior oﬃcers which the Bolsheviks joined







• in this ﬁrst crisis the government appealed to the socialists in the
Soviet to enter a coalition







• in this ﬁrst crisis the government appealed to the socialists in the
Soviet to enter a coalition

• Miliukov and Guchkov were out, six socialists from the Soviet accepted ministries, and
Kerensky [the only SR] became War Minister


By entering the “bourgeois” government, the socialists
automatically came to share the blame for everything
that went wrong, for they were now part of the
establishment. This allowed the Bolsheviks, who refused
to join, to pose as...the tr ue custodians of the
Revolution. And since under the hopelessly incompetent
administration of liberal and socialist intellectuals events
were bound to go from bad to worse, they positioned
themselves as the only party able to save Russia.

Pipes, p. 120


Delegates to the First All-Russian Session of Workers and Soldiers Deputies
photographed in the Tauride Palace, former home of the Duma, June, 1917


Street demonstration in Petrograd, June, 1917
The banner in the foreground reads:
Down with the 10 capitalist ministers/All power to the Soviets of Workers,
Soldiers and Peasants Deputies & to the Socialist Ministers/
We demand that Nicholas II be transferred to Peter and Paul Fortress


July Days


July Days

Petrograd, July 4, 1917. Street demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt just after troops of the
Provisional Government have opened ﬁre with machine guns.


Bolshevik Advantages over their Rivals


1. their pose as the “sole alternative” to the Provisional Government



2. unlike the SRs and the Mensheviks who talked revolution, but then
pulled back:



pulled back:

• they were really willing to use force, and



pulled back:


• they had a unique paramilitary organization able to do so



pulled back:



3. they thought in global terms and didn’t much care what happened
to Russia, for them a mere stepping-stone to the World Revolution



pulled back:




• they could act with complete irresponsibility



pulled back:





• promise every group what it wanted



pulled back:





• promise every group what it wanted

• encourage every destructive trend


RED GUARD
[of the]
The banner reads:
photo from 1917
factory
Vulcan
II. GR.


Red Guard bodyguards for Bolshevik
Nachalstvo (leadership)

The Other Bolshevik Tool
Pravda (Truth) ﬁnanced by the German government

The antiwar propaganda was carried out in muted tones,
for the troops hated the Germans and Lenin was already
under suspicion of being their a gent. Bolshevik
newspapers distributed in vast quantities to the men in
uniform carried a subtile message that was propagandistic
rather than agitational in nature:* The soldiers were not to
lay down their arms, but ponder who wanted war and to
what end? (The answer: the “bourgeoisie”) This was a
veiled appeal for civil war. The troops were exhorted
under no circumstances to let themselves be used against
the workers (by which was meant the Bolshevik Party).

Pipes, pp. 120-21
________________
*In the vocabulary of the Russian Revolutionaries, “agitation” meant an appeal to
immediate action, whereas “propaganda” called for planting ideas in subjects’ minds
which in due course would move them to act on their own


Kerensky as Warlord

• an offensive was scheduled for mid-June

• Kerensky’s personal contribution consisted
in rousing the troops with patriotic speeches

• these had an enormous immediate effect
which evaporated as soon as he left

• the generals regarded such rhetoric
sceptically, dubbing the Minister “Persuader
in Chief ”

• the will to fight was no longer there

• “Why should I die now when at home a new,
freer life is only beginning?” Saluting in the carriage as
troops pass in review


Kerensky visiting troops at the front, 1917


In Petrograd with his aides-de-camp


The Failed Kerensky Oﬀensive



• 16 June-the oﬀensive opens against Lwow
and Galicia--the Austrians




• the Eighth Army under Kornilov makes
good initial gains ()





• once again, the Germans come to the aid of
their weaker ally ()






• the Russian gains were erased and they fell
back to the dotted line positions







• the June oﬀensive was the dying gasp of the
Russian army







• the June oﬀensive was the dying gasp of the
Russian army

• this military failure weakened the reputation
of Kerensky and his government


The July Uprising


The July Uprising
• 2 July--as news from the front turned negative, four Kadet ministers
resigned from the Provisional (Coalition) Government over another
issue


The July Uprising
issue

• neither the Soviet nor the Bolsheviks wanted an uprising, correctly
assessing that “the correlation of forces” didn’t bode well


The July Uprising
issue


• 3 July--nevertheless, when the government ordered forty-year-old
soldiers who had been furloughed to work their farms back to the
front, military demonstrations erupted


The July Uprising
issue



• 4 July--20,ooo Kronstadt sailors joined the soldiers. They marched
on both the government and the Soviet demanding that the latter
assume all power


The July Uprising
issue



• 4 July--20,ooo Kronstadt sailors joined the soldiers. They marched
on both the government and the Soviet demanding that the latter
assume all power

• 5 July--the turning point Kerensky releases “forged” (were they?)
documents connecting the Bolsheviks to their German paymasters


Kronstadt Sailors
SMERT BOORZHOOYAM
(Death to the Bourgeoisie)


Lenin’s Role?
• 4 July--originally out of Petrograd in Finland, Lenin returned hastily
and addressed the demonstrators outside the Tauride Palace

• he counseled a peaceful demonstration but echoed their demand
(originally his!) of “All Power to the Soviets”

• had he planned a coup as Lunacharsky later claimed?
• did he “chicken out” when he saw an unfavorable “correlation of
forces” as Pipes claims (p. 127)?

• was he instrumental in persuading the Bolshevik Central
Committee to take a leadership role in the uprising even though it
was doomed to fail and the party would be hunted down and
suppressed in the aftermath? (the oﬃcial Soviet history and Sidney
Hook’s version)


Wiki’s “take”
No public record was ever made of the internal debates of the
Bolshevik Party around the July Days. There were some
within the Bolshevik Party who advocated an intensiﬁcation of
activity on July 4th. Most prominent among those were Nikolai
Podvoisky and Vladimir Nevsky, leaders of the Bolshevik
Military Organization, Volodarsky a member of the Petersburg
Committee and Martin Latis of the Vyborg District Bolshevik
Organization, who was highly critical of the Central
Committee's decision to hold back the masses. Others in the
Bolshevik Party, including V.I. Lenin were split on what to do.
On July 5th at two or three o'clock in the morning, after the
Provisional Government dispatched a number of loyal troops
from the front to the streets of Petrograd and won the support
of a number of previously neutral garrisons of troops, the
Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party decided to call off
the street demonstrations.


Bolsheviks on the run

Lenin with a wig,
as a fugitive in Finland


• with the arrival of loyal troops from the
front Kerensky is in control

Lenin with a wig,



• he hunts down and arrests the Bolsheviks

Lenin with a wig,




• 25 July--Lvov resigns, Kerensky becomes
Premier and keeps military command

Lenin with a wig,





• the Kadets return to the government and it
seems to be ﬁrmly in control

Lenin with a wig,






• despite these events, Kerensky fears a
right- wing, monarchist coup more than a
repetition of a Bolshevik putsch
Lenin with a wig,






• despite these events, Kerensky fears a
right- wing, monarchist coup more than a
repetition of a Bolshevik putsch
Lenin with a wig,
• Lenin takes this time in hiding to ﬁnish his
“blueprint,” State and Revolution


State and Revolution, Aug,1917 & 1918



• the key concept is that the “bourgeois state” (Provisional Government)
must be “shattered, broken to pieces”




• quoting Marx--the state is “the instrument of class oppression” and its
bureaucracy, police and standing army must be “broken up” (zerbrechen)
and replaced by “the dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marx’s stage 2 in
The Critique of the Gotha Program)





• only thus can the state begin to “wither away” (stage 3)





• in place of ministers and bureaucrats, the stage 2 “dictatorship” will
employ “managers and bookkeepers” paid “workmen’s wages”





• in place of ministers and bureaucrats, the stage 2 “dictatorship” will
employ “managers and bookkeepers” paid “workmen’s wages”

• much of Lenin’s argument is to point out the errors of the Social-
Democrats like Germany’s Karl Kautsky and Russian SR, Viktor Chernov


“With Lenin in hiding, the command of the Bolshevik forces
passes to his associates.” (Pipes, p. 128)



• Trotsky is the most visible, owing to
his outstanding rhetorical gifts

Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
AKA Leon Trotsky



• operational direction of the coup is
entrusted to the Bolshevik Military
Organization headed by N.I. Podvoiskii

AKA Leon Trotsky




• Trotsky compliments Lenin. Better
read, a superior speaker, he can move
crowds; whereas Lenin’s charisma is
limited to his followers

AKA Leon Trotsky





• but Trotsky is unpopular with the cadres:

AKA Leon Trotsky






• he had joined the party late

AKA Leon Trotsky






• he had joined the party late

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, • he is insuﬀerably arrogant
AKA Leon Trotsky

The event that enabled the Bolsheviks to recover from
their July debacle was one of the more bizarre episodes of
the Russian Revolution. Known to historians as the
Kornilov affair, it resulted from a struggle in Kerensky’s
mind between his sense that as head of state in a situation
of near-anarchy and a looming German offensive he
needed the army’s support, and his fear as a socialist
intellectual that the army was likely to breed a
counterrevolutionary Napoleon.*

Pipes, p. 129
___________________
* In private conversations with the author, Kerensky conceded that his actions at the time
had been strongly influenced by the experience of the French Revolution


Kornilov


General Lavr
Kornilov Kornilov in
1917


German troops enter Riga, 3 September 1917


“…[Kornilov] had made a rapid career in the army owing
to personal courage and his ability to inspire troops. He
knew little and cared less about politics; such opinions
as he had on the subject were neither conservative nor
monarchist but rather ‘progressive.’ he was an ardent
p a t r i o t . He a l w a y s d i s p l a y e d a t e n d e n c y t o
insubordination.”

Pipes, p. 129


Lavr Georgeivich Kornilov, 1870-1918
• born to a Siberian cossack military family
• graduate of the artillery school, distinguished
service in the Russo- Japanese and First World
Wars

• 1917-commanded the only successful part
of the Kerensky oﬀensive, he was oﬀered
command of all the Russian forces

• Kornilov accepted, but on certain
conditions:

• removal of the most harmful provisions of Order
No. 1

• reintroduction of the death penalty for desertion
or mutiny, at the front or at the rear


The Two Rivals

• “Kornilov loves freedom...but Russia comes for him first, and
freedom second, while for Kerensky...freedom and revolution come
first, and Russia second”--Boris Savinkov, Kerensky’s deputy

• negotiations dragged on for two weeks before Kornilov receives
agreement to his conditions. But Kerensky, hostage to the Soviet,
never fulfills the agreement

• 14 August--Kornilov speaks at the Moscow State Conference over
Kerensky’s objection. He is wildly cheered. Liberal and conservative
politicians look to him as the country’s savior.

• “...after the Moscow conference it was clear to me that the next
attempt at a blow would come from the right and not from the
left.”--Aleksandr Kerensky


Kornilov at the Moscow Conference
taking the crowd’s cheers as he tours in an open limosine


Misunderstanding or Kerensky Plot?

• 22-27 August--the events of the Kornilov aﬀair are quite complex
and involve third party players who to this day remain unknown

• suﬃce it to say that Kerensky pretended to believe that Kornilov
was demanding dictatorial powers to deal with a suspected
Bolshevik coup

• he thereupon relieved him of command and ordered his arrest. He
also armed the Petrograd Soviet and Bolsheviks to defend against a
counterrevolutionary coup

• at this point Kornilov did rebel “but only after having been wrongly
charged with rebellion” --Pipes, p. 134


Was there a “Kornilov plot”? Almost certainly not. The
available evidence indicates there was a “Kerensky plot” to
discredit the commanding general as the ringleader of an
imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the
suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a
position of unrivaled popularity...Neither Kerensky nor the
Bolsheviks have ever been able to identify a single person
who would admit, or of whom it could be demonstrated,
that he was in collusion with Kornilov: and a conspiracy of
one is an obvious absurdity.

Pipes, p. 135


Outcomes of the Aﬀair



• Kerensky became estranged from both liberals and conservatives
but failed to solidify his position with the socialists




• of the 40,000 guns distributed to the workers, a good part wound
up in the hands of the Red Guards





• September--the Bolsheviks showed gains in the municipal elections





• September--the Bolsheviks showed gains in the municipal elections
• most sinister was the break between Kerensky and the military. The
oﬃcer corps despised this treatment of their popular commander
and Kerensky’s pandering to the left. When, in late October, he
would appeal to the military to help save his government
from the Bolsheviks, he would meet with no response.


Great October Socialist
Revolution


The Cruiser Aurora


Boris Kustodiev (1878-1927) “The Bolshevik” (1920) The Treytyakov Gallery

The Timing of the Constituent Assembly


• 9/22 August-after interminable delays, the Provisional Government
scheduled elections for 12/25 November and the ﬁrst session for 28
November/10 December



• Lenin’s sense of urgency was was inspired by his fear of being
preempted by this peasant, thus SR, dominated body




• after November he would be rebelling, not against a “bourgeois”
government; but against the will of the “people”





• hence the Bolsheviks could no longer pretend to act in the name of
the “people”





• hence the Bolsheviks could no longer pretend to act in the name of
the “people”

• although Lenin wanted immediate action, he had to yield to the
majority of his associates who preferred the coup be carried out in
the name of the soviets


Trotsky and the MilRevCom


• 13 September(O.S.)-a majority of the
Petrograd Soviet voted for a Bolshevik
revolution


revolution

• this disowned the Menshevik-SR
leadership for the ﬁrst time


revolution


• soon thereafter Trotsky was elected
chairman


revolution


chairman

• 18 September-Bolsheviks gained control
of the Moscow Soviet


revolution


chairman


• city after city followed


revolution


chairman


• city after city followed

• 13 October-Petrograd established the
Military Revolutionary Committee with
Trotsky as its chairman

The precipitating event was a German naval operation in
the Gulf of Riga. When completed in early October with
the occupation of three strategic islands, it created a
direct threat to Petrograd. Fearing German capture, the
Russian General Staff proposed to evacuate the
government from Petrograd to Moscow. The Ispolkom
condemned the plan...as motivated by...the desire of the
Provisional Government to surrender the ‘capital of the
Revolution.’ ...the Bolsheviks moved and the Soviet
Plenum approved--over Menshevik objections--a motion
to form a Revolutionary Committee of Defense to
assume charge of the city’s security not only against the
Germans but also against domestic
‘counterrevolutionaries.’

Pipes, pp. 140-41

Ispolkom “caves” to a Bolshevik 2nd Congress


Ispolkom “caves” to a Bolshevik 2nd Congress

• Trotsky, as chair of the Petrograd Soviet, “stacks” the voting for calling a
second All-Russian Congress of Soviets for October/November

• the Ispolkom, dominated by Mensheviks and SRs, ﬁrst condemned this
action in the strongest terms

• 26 Sept/9 Oct-they reversed themselves, agreeing to a Bolshevik-picked
Congress to convene on 25 Oct/7 November

• it was an astonishing and, as it turned out, a fatal capitulation
• “Although aware of what the Bolsheviks had in mind, the Ispolkom gave
them what they wanted: a handpicked body, packed with their adherents
and allies, to legitimize a coup d’etat”


The Politburo

• although the caption suggests that the
graphic reﬂects the eve of the October
Revolution, the prominence of Stalin
suggests a later date

• this organ is the “inner circle” of the
party, within the Central Committee

• Lenin had to convince this group that
his timing and strategy was correct

• he secretly returned to Petrograd from
Finland early in October

• 10/23 October-Lenin convinced all but
Kamenev and Zinoviev of the need to
act


Mesmerized by Bolshevik audacity, the Mensheviks and
S R s r e s i g n e d t h e m s e l v e s to a n o t h e r B o l s h e v i k
“adventure,” but they were not overly concerned, certain
that it would fail like their July putsch. Trotsky, who
during these critical days was everywhere at once, waged a
war of nerves, one day admitting, the next denying, that
an insurrection was under way. He held audiences
spellbound with speeches that alternately promised and
threatened, extolled and ridiculed.

Pipes, p.142


Seizing the Key Points in Petrograd


• out of the total force of 240,000 soldiers in the capital & environs, no
more than 10,000 actively supported the Bolsheviks



• but the government could count on even fewer! Most remained
“neutral” The result of the Kornilov aﬀair!




• and the Bolshevik Military Organization had 20,000 Red Guards




• 24 October-Kerensky tried to arrest the Bolshevik commissars




• the Winter Palace was garrisoned with a pathetically inadequate force




• 24-25-that night the Bolsheviks seized key points throughout
Petrograd, cadet guards, told to withdraw, either did so or were
disarmed




• 24-25-that night the Bolsheviks seized key points throughout
Petrograd, cadet guards, told to withdraw, either did so or were
disarmed

• no resistance was encountered, no shots exchanged

The Latvian Riﬂemen



• military formations assembled starting 1915 in Latvia in order to
defend Baltic territories against Germans in World War I.




• Initially the battalions were formed by volunteers, and from 1916 by
conscription among the Latvian population.





• A total of about 40,000 troops were drafted into the Latvian
Riﬂemen Division.





Riﬂemen Division.

• 1917-resentments towards their tsarist generals led most to side with
the Bolsheviks





Riﬂemen Division.

• 1917-resentments towards their tsarist generals led most to side with
the Bolsheviks

• these units became Lenin’s most reliable troops during the entire
civil war (1918-1921)


TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!

The Provisional Government has been deposed. Government
authority has passed into the hands of an organ of the Petrograd
Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Militar y
Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the
Petrograd proletariat and garrison.
The task for which the people have been struggling--the
immediate oﬀer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landlord
property in land, worker control over production, the creation of a
Soviet Government--this task is assured.
Long Live the Revolution of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants!

proclaimed by Lenin, 9 a.m., 25 October 1917


Fact versus Myth
• the cabinet that Lenin had declared deposed sat in
the Winter Palace awaiting help

• their protectors: two or three detachments of
military cadets, the Woman’s Death Battalion of
140 volunteers, some cossacks, a bicycle unit, and
40 war invalids commanded by an officer with
artificial legs

• at dawn a half-hearted attack went forward but
retreated at the first hostile fire

• 6:30 p.m. an ultimatum to surrender was ignored

• 9:00 p.m. the cruiser Aurora, with no live
ammunition, fired a blank salvo

• 11:00 p.m. the guns of Petropavlovsk fortress
opened fire. Two of thirty-five rounds fired hit the
target


Iconic scenes from Eisenstein’s Oktyabr, 1928


The Congress of Soviets “rubber stamps”
the coup
• 25 October-Lenin delayed the opening of the Congress until the fall
of the Winter Palace and the arrest of the ministers

• only Kerensky escaped, disguised as a Serbian military oﬃcer, with
the U.S. Embassy’s aid

• Of the 650 delegates 338 were Bolshevik. They were supported by
the Left SRs, another 98. This gave Lenin a two-thirds majority

• around 1 a.m. 26 October word arrived that the Winter palace was in
Bolshevik hands

• thereafter followed the Decree on Peace and the Land Decrees
along with creation of a new provisional government, the Council of
People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) and a Central Executive
Committee (C.E.C./ЦИК orTsIK) of the Congress of Soviets, both
dominated by the Bolsheviks

Creation of the One Party State
• in the weeks and months that followed “Great October” Lenin
quietly discarded the pretense of a government coalition

• some of the Bolsheviks expected to share power with the other
socialists and the left SRs

• this was never Lenin’s plan
• Sovnarkom was originally styled the Provisional Government before
the meeting of the Constituent Assembly

• this led many to believe that nothing important had really changed
with the coup

• after the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly, the “provisional”
was quietly dropped


Land! Peace! Bread!


FREEDOM
Land! Peace! Bread! “BONDS”
Poster from
1917


One of the ﬁrst acts of the Bolshevik leaders was aimed at
satisfying the peasant demand for land. Taking a leaf from the
agrarian program of the left SRs, Lenin had proposed on 8
November [N.S.], and the Congress of Soviets had accepted, a
decree on land. This decree, the most radical approach to the
agrarian question ever undertaken in Russia, provided that all
land owned by landlords, the crown, the churches and
monasteries, together with all livestock and implements on
such land, be transferred without compensation to the former
owners into the temporary custody of peasant land committees
and peasant soviets until the meeting of the Constituent
Assembly. Title to the land was to be vested in the state, but
the use of it was to be given to the peasants in perpetuity.

Harcave, pp. 495-96


Bolshevik Goals after “Great October”


1) solidify their power in Petrograd


2) expand it nationwide and globally


1)in order to do this Lenin believed peace was essential



2)only during peace could they have a peredyshka, a “breathing spell”
during which to:



during which to:

1) consolidate their authority



during which to:


2) organize an administration



during which to:


2) organize an administration

3) build a new, revolutionary army


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