In the latest of our series on great revolutions, Dominic Alexander looks at how the Russian socialists had to confront the question of state power – or see their revolution perish  

Part 1: The English Revolution begins
Part 2: The English Revolution: the first civil war
Part 3: The English Revolution Completed
Part 4: The French Revolution: the road to revolution
Part 5: The French Revolution: Revolution and the Sans Culottes
Part 6: How the Great Revolutions happened, France: Rise and fall of a popular republic
Part 7: The age of revolutions: Aftershocks of the French Revolution
Part 8: The nineteenth-century age of revolutions: betrayal to red revolution 1830-1849
Part 9: The nineteenth-century age of revolution: the Paris Commune and the conservative capitalist European order
Part 10: The course of Russian history
Part 11: Revolution arrives in Russia
Part 12: The soviets and the peak of the 1905 revolution 
Part 13: Russia, The February Revolution
Part 14: Russia, The June offensive to the Kornilov coup

Kornilov’s revolt destroyed the second coalition government, with the Kadets leaving the cabinet, refusing to support Kerensky’s actions against the general. The leaderships of the Menshevik and SR Parties continued to try to revive a coalition, but the mass feeling, even among their own memberships, was overwhelmingly in favour of a purely socialist government, and one based firmly on the soviets. The Mensheviks began to haemorrhage members to the Bolshevik Party. Nonetheless, even the Kronstadt sailors hoped to bring the moderate socialists back into the revolutionary camp – they wanted a coalition of all the socialist parties.ⁱ 

The moderates found themselves embarrassed in the Soviet over the issue of a government; since the Kadets had supported Kornilov, it was difficult to defend their inclusion in any coalition. The Mensheviks began to lose control of the Petrograd Soviet; Trotsky, now at liberty and formally a Bolshevik, called a vote of no confidence in the CEC and won.ⁱⁱ By the beginning of September, the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets as well as those in other industrial cities. 

The Tsay-ee-kah was still controlled by the moderates, who began procrastinating over the calling of a new Congress of Soviets, which looked inevitably to be dominated by Bolsheviks. Trotsky was elected President of the Petrograd Soviet on 23 September, and called for a new Congress of Soviets to take over governmental power. This was just days after Kerensky had formed a new coalition including the Kadets, but with no popular or institutional support the government was simply suspended in a vacuum. 

Kerensky’s pathetic attempts to get the newly formed revolutionary committees to stand down, and normal discipline to resume in the military, were rebuffed even by the moderate leaders, but most emphatically on the ground. Soldiers, workers and peasants all understood that Kerensky had been in negotiation with Kornilov before the coup and judged the former as little better than the latter in consequence. Soldiers viewed all their officers in a similarly dim light.ⁱⁱⁱ  

Bolsheviks were also now in control of many of the soldiers’ committees in Petrograd. Elsewhere, the swing to the left was very marked, with soviets taking over governmental power in Ekaterinburg, the main city of the Urals, for example, and similar moves occurring in Ukraine and the Volga basin. The Congress of Finnish Soviets resoundingly adopted Bolshevik resolutions. Left SRs were also gaining ground, and increasingly voting and acting with the Bolsheviks. Peasant revolutionary action was also accelerating once more. A revolutionary move in Petrograd would certainly gain support in the provinces.^iv 

The stage was set for the Bolshevik Party to take power, but it was still by no means an inevitability. The mass mood certainly favoured the Bolshevik programme, but it also preferred a coalition of socialist parties based on the soviets, while strategic and political divisions within the Bolsheviks also made it questionable at this stage whether it was capable of seizing the moment before a new Kornilov emerged to rejuvenate the counterrevolution. Kamenev in particular opposed Lenin’s demand that the party plan for insurrection, and still sought a degree of co-operation with the moderate leaders.^v 

The dividing line here lay in the understanding of the nature of the state. The moderate socialists had imbibed the attitude of the western European Second International workers’ parties, like the German SPD, that it was possible to transition to socialism gradually through piecemeal reform of the existing state. A period of coalition between socialist and bourgeois parties was therefore a natural, even necessary, stage. Lenin, however, insisted on the need for a revolutionary rupture, and expounded the argument in the short book, State and Revolution, written largely before February, but only published shortly before October. 

The question of state power 

In State and Revolution, Lenin returned to the revolutionary perspective of Marx, arguing that the state was necessarily an organ of class rule, and since class struggles are irreconcilable, the state cannot be a coalition of opposing interests. Therefore, there was no alternative but a revolutionary smashing of the bourgeois state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The moderates’ desperation to include bourgeois elements in the government could not lead anywhere but to counterrevolution and represented a fatal abnegation of socialism as a goal. This, by any measure, was petit-bourgeois politics. 

Lenin’s reflection on Marx’s comments about the Paris Commune of 1871, where workers tried to seize power for the first time, illustrates his view of ‘smashing the state’ and replacing it with proletarian dictatorship: ‘the Commune appears to have replaced the smashed state machine “only” by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this “only” signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different order.’^vi 

The networks of soviets, of course, provided just the set of democratic institutions that would be needed for such a revolutionary transformation in Russia. While Lenin had cooled towards the slogan ‘all power to the Soviets’ after July, he now re-emphasised it, but clarified that it must mean a wholesale replacement of existing state institutions with soviet ones, rather than, as some had interpreted it, a government consisting of individuals from the majority parties of the soviets.^vii A soviet apparatus of state would be the dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasants for which the Bolshevik Party had been advocating. At this stage in September, Lenin faced opposition in the party not only from the right, with Kamenev doubting that Russia was ready for socialist revolution, but also from the left, some of whom doubted that the Kornilov experience had been enough to turn the soviets into revolutionary institutions.^viii 

Despite these arguments, the Bolsheviks concentrated on expanding their influence in the soviets and committees, but the party Central Committee rejected Lenin’s insistence that preparations for insurrection be made. Fearing that the moment would be wasted, and fail the Revolution, Lenin, against the orders of the Central Committee, returned to Petrograd in secret. It was not just figures on the right, like Kamenev, who opposed Lenin’s policy, but left leaders, like Trotsky and Sverdlov, who noted the mass attachment to the soviets, and felt that any move to revolution needed to coincide with a new Congress of Soviets, in which they hoped the Bolsheviks would have a majority.^ix Meanwhile, under Bolshevik and soviet pressure, on 24 September, the Tsay-ee-kah finally agreed to call a new Congress for 20 October. Trotsky at the Petrograd Soviet won a resolution that the entire revolutionary democracy would reject Kerensky’s coalition government, setting up the expectation that the Congress of Soviets would create a new revolutionary government. 

Lenin didn’t give up on pushing for the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional Government, and went around the Central Committee, sending letters to the Petrograd and Moscow committees, and other bodies, appealing for action. These letters had a significant impact, with both the Moscow and Petrograd committees putting pressure on the Central Committee in agreement with Lenin. A Finnish member of the Executive Committee supported Lenin’s line, also arguing that the situation in Finland was such that the party was already at war against the government and must move forward or retreat. There was a feeling that while the party put off revolutionary action, it was actually creating distrust among its supporters.^x Yet, others still argued that the situation was not yet ripe, even if they agreed with Lenin’s general strategy. 

There was enough support for Lenin at levels below the Central Committee, nonetheless, for the Executive Committee to begin to make preparations following his advice. It wasn’t, however, until the Central Committee meeting of 10 October that it was agreed that the Provisional Government should be overthrown and power transferred to the soviets. This meeting did not entirely resolve the differences between Lenin and others like Kamenev and Zinoviev, but it did mean the decision filtered down to local party committees across the country, enabling them to prepare. There had also been a tactical difference in the views of Lenin and Trotsky on the timing of any insurrection. Trotsky was insistent that a revolution had to be based on the Congress of Soviets, while Lenin was worried the moderates of the Tsay-ee-kah would succeed in delaying the Congress, and the Bolsheviks would miss the window of opportunity. Either way, both saw the soviets as the basis for a legal revolutionary regime.^xi 

October preparations 

The situation was certainly critical by early October, with further defeats at the front and the German navy active in the Gulf of Finland, threatening the possibility of a German seizure of Petrograd, which would be disastrous for the revolution. A right-liberal politician, Rodzianko even stated in public that he would be glad if the Germans occupied the city and established order. The Provisional Government was helpless to stop the spread of peasants seizing land and burning landowners’ mansions. Kerensky also alarmed everyone by announcing that most of the Petrograd garrison would be moved to the front, confirming suspicions that he intended to abandon the capital for Moscow.^xii The reaction among soldiers was an avalanche of demands for power to be transferred to the soviets, and promising support for the Soviet if it attempted to take power. 

On 6 October, Trotsky addressed the soldiers’ soviet in Petrograd, representing the city’s garrison, arguing that the government’s helplessness meant that it should give way to another. The soldiers agreed unanimously, announcing also their willingness to defend the city against the government itself, if need be.^xiii From 11 to 13 October, in preparation for the Congress of Soviets, a Northern Region Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd, with 51 out of 94 delegates being Bolsheviks, and a further 24 Left-SRs, while the four right-Menshevik deputies left as soon as it opened. There were doubts among the Bolshevik delegates about whether there was the organisational capacity for an insurrection at this point, worrying that Red Guard units were in a state of dissolution. The Left SRs were firmly opposed to an immediate uprising, wanting the Congress of Soviets to convene first. Nonetheless, the dominance of revolutionary left views was the marked tone of the Northern Congress. 

Trotsky also became the key moving figure in the newly convened Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet, set up initially for self-defence only. However, this committee was effectively to organise the logistics of the coming insurrection. Going around the Tsay-ee-kah, Trotsky, on behalf of the Northern Congress of Soviets, also issued a Russia-wide call for soviets and the army to send delegates to the All-Russia Congress, thus torpedoing the moderates’ ability to delay it indefinitely.^xiv 

A meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee, together with local leaders, convened again to discuss insurrection, and again Zinoviev and Kamenev vigorously opposed Lenin’s policy, but an agreement was reached provisionally setting the date for 20 October, the eve of the planned opening of the Congress of Soviets. However, Kamenev and Zinoviev did not take the decision of the meeting as final and denounced the idea of insurrection in a piece in Gorky’s newspaper, Gorky at this point being quite hostile to the idea of an uprising. Kamenev and Zinoviev were petrified that an insurrection would end as disastrously as the July Days. Lenin was naturally infuriated by their betrayal, but it is a mark of how fraught the debates were in the party leadership that the Central Committee did not even respond to Lenin’s call for the pair to be expelled. 

Trotsky was put in an awkward position when questioned in the soviet about whether an insurrection was planned. He denied it, but carefully did so in the name of the soviet rather than the Bolshevik Party. Otherwise Bolsheviks continued to emphasise their demands for peace now and land for the peasants. The episode was successfully smoothed over, with the SR and Menshevik leaders left with the impression that the Bolsheviks were not, in fact, on the verge of an uprising. 

Lenin at this point might appear to have been almost ultra-left in his insistence on an immediate insurrection, particularly as local Bolshevik leaders frequently urged caution, and Trotsky was closer to mass opinion in emphasising the centrality of the soviets to revolutionary action. However, Lenin from his return to Russia in April had been battling the conservatism of the top Bolshevik leadership, and without his relentless pressure, it is highly questionable whether the party would have seized the narrow window available between the government’s paralysis and a counterrevolutionary recovery. 

Eve of revolution 

There was a real concern among Bolsheviks that the front soldiers’ committees were still controlled by the moderates, and there was worry, as late as 23 October, that the soldiers would respond to an appeal from the Tsay-ee-kah against any Bolshevik uprising in the capital.^xv Even the Bolshevik Military Organisation was fearful of a premature rising, and doubted, erroneously as it turned out, how far the radicalised sailors would be able to help any insurrection. However, Kerensky’s decision to move the bulk of the Petrograd garrison to the front continued to fuel the Soviet’s own preparations for a confrontation, with a garrison conference on 16 October registering the soldiers’ lack of confidence in the Provisional Government, and support for action against it organised by the Petrograd Soviet. 

The moderate leaders tried to gerrymander another meeting the following day that would produce a calmer result, but the delegates again this time responded to Trotsky’s arguments rather than to those of the moderates.^xvi The moderates were not above other ruses to stymie rising radicalism. As delegates to the new Congress of Soviets began to filter into Petrograd, the Credentials Committee, appointed by the Tsay-ee-kah, attempted to disallow many of them. Clear class prejudice seems often to have been surfacing among the moderates at this time. A member of Plekhanov’s group remarked about the delegates: ‘See how rough and ignorant they look! The Dark People’, that is ‘bearded soldiers, workmen in black blouses, a few long-haired peasants’. The Bolsheviks warned against rumours that the Congress would not happen and that delegates should leave the city. The US socialist journalist John Reed observed one Bolshevik official reassuring disallowed delegates that they would get their seats when the time came.^xvii 

In addition to the rumours that Kerensky was preparing to abandon Petrograd, news was coming in of repression elsewhere in Russia, with Cossacks being used to supress a major miners’ strike in the Don Basin, and the soviet at Kaluga, south of Moscow, being bombarded and dispersed, both with the tacit support of the Tsay-ee-kah.^xviii The moderates were increasingly siding with counterrevolutionary forces, and this was clear to the workers and soldiers in Petrograd. 

Meanwhile, the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) began to use the threat to the garrison to mobilise support for the transfer of power to the Soviet. Re-assured by the support it received, the MRC began to dispatch its own commissars to replace those known to support the government in all units and weapons depots. Late in the evening of 21 October, they sent a group of representatives to the military General Staff headquarters with the message: ‘Henceforth, orders not signed by us are invalid’. The commander-in-chief, Polkovnikov, responded that they only recognised the commissar from the Soviet CEC. In response, Trotsky issued a declaration, endorsed by the garrison conference, repudiating the Provisional Government’s authority over the troops in Petrograd.^xix The October Revolution is usually dated from the 24 October, but in effect, it began at this moment when the MRC claimed final authority over the garrison. 

The next day, 22 October, was ‘Petrograd Soviet Day’, a long-arranged celebration intended mainly for rallies and fundraising for the soviet. Bolshevik orators were prominent everywhere, with Trotsky the lead speaker at a huge opera-house meeting. The messages were that the Congress of Soviets would select a new government which would bring peace, abolish private property, seize grain hoarded by landowners, disperse money and clothing to those who needed it, and distribute land to the peasants. Trotsky appealed for a pledge of support to the Soviet. Sukhanov observed at this meeting that there ‘was a mood bordering on ecstasy … The vast crowd was holding up its hands. It agreed. It vowed…’xv 

152 ibid. p.158.
153 Deutscher, Prophet Armed, p.233.
154 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p.167.
155 Cliff, Power to the Soviets, p.313.
156 Deutscher, Prophet Armed, p.239.
157 Lenin, The State and Revolution (Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1976), chapter 3, p.52.
158 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p.171.
159 ibid. p.173.
160 ibid. p.187.
161 ibid. p.197.
162 Deutscher, Prophet Armed, p.240.
163 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p.225.
164 Deutscher, Prophet Armed, p.245.
165 ibid. p.248.
166 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p.246.
167 ibid. p.237.
168 Reed, Ten Days, pp.55-6.
169 ibid. p.63.
170 Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p.241.
171 ibid. p.243.