The Struggle for the Masses

The decisive arena of struggle, without doubt, was the Soviets. From the moment of Lenin’s return, the Bolshevik Party was firmly oriented to the goal of the conquest of power. But the prior condition for this was the winning over of a decisive majority of the working class. This meant winning a majority in those organisations that commanded the allegiance of the mass of workers and soldiers – the Soviets. But a serious obstacle was the domination of the Soviets by the reformist leaders, the Mensheviks and SRs. From February until the summer, the majority was firmly in the hands of the Mensheviks and SRs who favoured a coalition with the bourgeois liberals, although they were obliged to cover their rear end by using the old formula of supporting the Provisional Government ‘insofar as’ it did this or that. This was to silence criticisms from the workers in the Soviets who were naturally suspicious of the bourgeois government. But they trusted their leaders and would not automatically abandon them, even though they did not agree with some of their policies. The Bolsheviks were initially at a great disadvantage. Their weakness in the Soviets immediately after February is even greater than the figures suggest. In some Soviets they had a disproportionately large representation because they did deals with the Mensheviks to present joint lists of candidates. Thus, in Saratov, the Bolsheviks got three out of five members of the Soviet presidium, when they only had 28 out of 248 deputies in the plenum. (See JLH Keep, The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia, p. 142.)

From the spring onwards, the Bolsheviks waged an energetic campaign for new elections to the Soviets. In the course of a revolution the masses learn rapidly from their own experience. Soviets, it is true, are a much more faithful reflection of the changing moods and consciousness of the masses than the cumbersome machinery of even the most democratic parliament. But even the Soviets lagged behind the swiftly changing situation, and more often than not reflected the yesterday rather than the today of the masses’ ideas and aspirations. The Bolsheviks were always much stronger in the factory committees because these were much closer to the rank-and-file workers and thus reflected more quickly the real mood at the bottom.

Between August and September, the composition of the Soviets experienced a dramatic transformation. Here again the Kornilov affair marks the decisive turning point. The threat of counter-revolution spurred the Soviets to demand decisive action, and the Bolshevik slogans of a break with the bourgeoisie and ‘all power to the Soviets’ began to take root. The Soviet Executive Committee was inundated with telegrams demanding that it take the power. Although the process was somewhat uneven, the general tendency was clearly towards the Bolsheviks from this time onwards. The Soviet Executive still clung to its discredited policy of support for the Provisional Government, but only by a wafer-thin majority – there were 86 delegates in favour of soviet power, and only 97 against. But the situation was changing by the day, almost by the hour.

A decisive turning point occurred in the first week of September when control of the Petrograd Soviet passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks. The balance of forces was revealed when a resolution demanding the formation of a government of workers and peasants proposed by the Bolsheviks received 229 votes, with 115 against and 51 abstentions, which revealed that many of the Menshevik and SR workers had voted for the Bolsheviks. As a result, the stunned reformist leadership announced their resignation. Panicking at the loss of this key position, the reformists immediately commenced a furious campaign in the pages of Izvestiya, alleging, as usual in such cases, that the meeting had been unrepresentative and calling on all delegates to turn up to the next meeting to overturn the vote. (See O. Anweiler, Los Soviets en Rusia: 1905-1921, p. 189.)

The session of 9 September was a heated one. Everyone was aware of the vital importance of the outcome. All the factions ensured that they were represented down to the last delegate. There were about 1,000 delegates present. Fearing that they could not get a majority on their own to oust the presidium, the Bolshevik delegation proposed that the voting be on a proportional basis. Lenin condemned this procedural move, which he feared might blunt the edge of the Bolsheviks’ case. The issue was the question of workers’ power, and no amount of constitutional wrangling should be allowed to obscure this. But Lenin need not have worried. The issues were sufficiently clear to all, and the procedural proposal had the advantage that it helped win over the wavering elements, namely Martov’s group and even the more right-wing Popular Socialists. In any case, the chairman Tsereteli ruled the compromise out of order. But the right wing had miscalculated. By ruling out a compromise and obliging the delegates to vote on a straight resolution, moved by the reformists, that the previous vote on 1 September did not correspond to the line of the Soviet, and reaffirming support for the old presidium, they forced the Bolsheviks to pick up the gauntlet and polarised the whole meeting. It was a question of ‘either… or’.

The leading speaker for the Bolsheviks was Trotsky, in his first public appearance since his release from prison. He was warmly applauded by part of the hall, before launching a blistering attack on the presidium. Was Kerensky still a member of the presidium, yes or no? The question immediately put the presidium on a wrong footing. After a moment’s hesitation, the answer was given in the affirmative. This was exploited to the full by Trotsky: “We had firmly believed that Kerensky would not be allowed to sit in the presidium. We were mistaken. The ghost of Kerensky now sits between Dan and Cheidze… When they propose to you to sanction the political line of the presidium, do not forget that you will be sanctioning the policies of Kerensky.” (L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 805.) Even at this stage, the Bolsheviks directed their fire, not so much at the reformists, but always at the bourgeois and Kerensky, who was now completely identified with the bourgeois. By such skilful propaganda, they succeeded in winning over workers who had up until recently stood solidly behind the Mensheviks and SRs. By concentrating their attacks on the class enemy, they systematically exposed the class-collaborationist policies of the reformists, their cowardice, their unwillingness to confront the enemies of the workers and peasants, and thereby drove a wedge between the reformists and their supporters.

The result of the vote could not be clearer: for the Coalition, 414 votes; against, 519; abstentions, 67. This victory for the Bolsheviks was even more resounding for the fact that the reformists had spared no efforts to pack the meeting with their supporters and had themselves insisted in turning the vote into a referendum on the issue: The Coalition or Soviet Power? Reformism or Bolshevism? The defeat was a body blow to the right wing. They had invested so much in winning this meeting that the loss of the vote seemed to deflate them utterly. On the other hand, the left wing was encouraged and pressed home its advantage. On 11 September, when Dan defended the Coalition against Trotsky, who spoke for a Soviet government in the Petrograd Soviet, the Coalition was rejected with only ten votes cast for, and seven abstentions. The battle in Petrograd had been decisively won.

The tide was now flowing strongly in favour of the Bolsheviks everywhere. On 5 September, the Congress of Soviets of Central Siberia solidly backed the Bolsheviks. Moscow soon followed suit, with the Bolsheviks winning the majority not only in the Soviet, but in the soldiers’ committee that existed separately from it. In the elections to the Moscow Workers’ Soviet Executive Committee, held on 19 September, the Bolsheviks won 32 seats, the Mensheviks 16. Nogin was elected President. On 5 October, the Bolsheviks presented a resolution on the current situation to a session of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet and the result was 335 votes for and 254 against. But in the Executive of the Soldiers’ Soviet the situation was different. Here the Bolsheviks remained in a minority, with 16 seats, as against 26 for the SRs and nine Mensheviks – a situation that lasted right up to the October insurrection. For this reason in the general meetings of both executives, the rival factions were evenly balanced, and the Bolsheviks were sometimes in a minority, although they usually managed to get their resolutions passed. On the other hand, in the Moscow region as a whole, the Bolsheviks had won the majority as far back as May. (See O. Anweiler, Los Soviets en Rusia: 1905-1921, pp. 190-91.)

The Bolsheviks also had a strong position in the northern territories around Petrograd. In the Kronstadt Soviet, the Bolsheviks had 100 delegates, the Left SRs 75, the Menshevik Internationalists 12, the anarchists seven. The rest (90) were independents. The Bolsheviks got the majority in Finland – especially in Helsingfors and Vyborg, where the power of the Provisional Government was already eliminated in September. In Estonia, too, the left won outright. The big majority in September in Reval, Dorpat, and Wenden were Bolsheviks and Left SRs. In the regional committee elected in October there were six Bolsheviks, four Left SRs, one Menshevik Internationalist, and one right Menshevik. The organisation of the Baltic Fleet – Centrobalt – broke off all relations with the Provisional Government and began to run its own affairs. The Fifth Legion, which was considered to be the finest of the front-line regiments, in mid-October voted in a new committee with a majority of Bolsheviks. Thus, not only Petrograd, but all the surrounding regions were firmly with the Bolsheviks.

Historically, the struggle to win influence in the trade unions, the basic unit of working-class organisation, always occupied a central place in the strategy and tactics of Bolshevism. However, in the Russian Revolution, while the fight for control of the unions continued unabated, it was pushed into second place by the parallel struggle in the Soviets and factory committees. There were a number of reasons for this. In tsarist Russia, the trade unions eked out a precarious existence under an autocratic regime that frequently subjected them to arrests and all kinds of prohibitions that severely restricted their freedom to act. Thus, in 1917, the unions were in a relatively weak state, embracing only a small minority of workers, mostly in the more skilled and better paid layers of the class. The mass of unorganised workers who poured onto the stage after February organised themselves spontaneously in the Soviets and factory committees that were more flexible and more representative than the unions, which more often than not were dominated by conservative elements who naturally gravitated to the Mensheviks, rather than the revolutionary wing.

Among the first institutions to rally to the Bolsheviks were the factory committees. By June-July the Petrograd committees were already under Bolshevik control; and at the third All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees (17-22 October) more than half the 167 voting delegates were Bolsheviks who also enjoyed the support of the 24 Socialist-Revolutionary delegates. The opposition consisted only of seven Mensheviks and 13 Anarcho-Syndicalists. This was indeed, as Trotsky proudly claimed, “the most direct and indubitable representation of the proletariat in the whole country”. (L. Kochan, Russia in Revolution, p. 269.)

The work in the Soviets and factory committees, of course, did not mean that the Bolsheviks neglected the unions. On the contrary. Throughout 1917, the trade unions were a field of constant struggle between the revolutionary tendency and the reformist leaders. The advance of the Bolsheviks was more rapid in the metal workers of Petrograd, where they soon won a predominant influence. Workers were recruited en masse at factory meetings where all the main decisions were taken by an open show of hands. Here, too, the fresh new layers immediately gravitated to the revolutionary wing. It was this very layer that transformed the internal situation of the Bolshevik Party itself. Already in April, all but four executives of the metal workers’ union in Petrograd were in the hands of the Bolsheviks. By June, the Petrograd organisation had a “fully formed apparatus” of over a hundred strong, paid for out of union funds. From Petrograd, the party’s influence in the unions spread out to other areas. By May the metal workers’ union had 54,000 members, and by August, 138,000. (See JLH Keep, The Rise of the Social Democracy in Russia, p. 101.) Given that the total workforce employed in the metal industry stood at 546,100 in January 1917, this represented a sizeable proportion of a key section of the proletariat. By the end of the year, the unions claimed a membership of 544,527 members in 236 organisations.

The picture in the textile union, the second most important group, was more mixed. In June, the union claimed a total membership of 240,000 members, and may have reached 400,000 by October. This was half the total employed in the industry. A large part of the workforce were women, and the textile industry was badly affected by unemployment, so there was at first a tendency to look to the union for solutions to pressing socioeconomic problems rather than revolutionary politics. This might explain why the Mensheviks and SRs dominated the union (except in Petrograd, where the Bolsheviks had a small group before the February Revolution, and rapidly became the dominant force) in the period after February. But the Bolsheviks, once again using their base in Petrograd as a launching pad, set out to conquer one area after another, beginning with the important Central Industrial Area. In June they called a regional conference where a number of Bolshevik-inspired resolutions were passed, demanding, among other things, workers’ control of industry. The Menshevik leaders, in a manner common to all trade union bureaucracies when they are on the losing end, claimed that the conference was ‘irregular’. But in fact, it merely reflected a general swing to the left among the workers who were beginning to break free of the influence of the reformist leaders. The changing mood was reflected by the fact that the conference elected a new executive committee in which the Bolsheviks held positions of influence. Thus, step by step, the persistent and systematic work of the revolutionary tendency was wresting one position after another from the Mensheviks and SRs. By August, the Bolsheviks had managed to gain a strong position in the main industrial unions. Anweiler expresses the growth of the Bolsheviks in the unions thus:

While the Bolsheviks at the All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions (June 1917) only had the support of 36.4 per cent of the delegates, out of a total of 117 delegates in the Democratic Conference in September, 58 per cent were Bolsheviks, as against 38.4 per cent Mensheviks and right SRs.

Even in the traditionally conservative white-collar and craft unions, there had been a change in outlook and the Bolsheviks, though still in a minority, had won a sizeable following. However, in the upper reaches of the unions, things were different. The slow-moving machinery of the union structure meant that the changes at the lower level took a long time before communicating themselves to the leadership. In many of the unions, the Bolsheviks only gained control some time after the October Revolution. Some of them played an openly counter-revolutionary role, notably the bank clerks and the All-Russian Union of Railwaymen, which attempted to sabotage the Soviet government after the revolution.

Up until August, the Bolsheviks still remained a small minority of the working class. In the Soviets, they were the smallest group. The same was true of the local councils and the trade unions. In April, the party membership stood at around 80,000. By August, this had increased to 240,000. (O. Anweiler, Los Soviets en Rusia, p. 187 and p. 186.) But the party’s influence in the working class was growing, especially since the Kornilov episode. In some areas, like Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the Bolsheviks were in the majority as early as the spring. But such cases were exceptional. In the provinces, and still more in the rural areas, the gulf separating the Bolsheviks from the reformist parties was enormous.

The July Days seemed to mark the final demise of the Bolsheviks. Yet in a few weeks the party had all but recovered the lost ground. The tactics of the Bolsheviks in opposing the Kornilov rising was the fundamental turning point, winning colossal prestige for the Bolsheviks as the most determined and energetic fighters against the counter-revolution, and once and for all laying to rest the slanders about ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and ‘German agents’. The tide began to flow strongly in favour of the Bolsheviks to the degree that it became clear that the Provisional Government was not solving any one of the pressing problems facing the Russian people, and that the reformist leaders were mere appendages of the capitalists. The Bolshevik slogan of ‘peace, bread, and land’ gained an ever wider audience.

By late August and early September, the Bolsheviks became the decisive mass force, not only in Petrograd and Moscow, but also in the provinces. Although the party remained relatively small in membership, for every member there were 20, 30, or 50 workers and soldiers who considered themselves to be Bolsheviks. Under such circumstances, when the current was flowing strongly in favour of the revolutionary tendency, even persecution acted as a spur to growth. Workers who were striking for higher wages, and were met with a chorus of disapproval from the bourgeois press which attacked them as Bolsheviks, became firmly convinced of the justness of the Bolsheviks’ cause, even though they had never read a single line of Lenin. Bolshevism was growing for the simple reason that its policies and slogans closely corresponded to the needs and aspirations of the workers and peasants.

At the Seventh All-Russian Conference, in the first week of May,[5] 79,204 party members were represented by 149 delegates. The largest concentrations were in the Petrograd province and in the Urals (over 14,000 each), with Moscow province (7,000) and the Donets Basin (5,000) next in importance. The strength of the party increased rapidly in the next few months. Sverdlov told the Sixth Congress in August that the number of organisations had grown from 78 to 162, and he estimated the total strength of the party at 200,000. No information is available on party membership by November, but it may be presumed that a further increase took place, since the very incomplete data on the membership of individual organisations available to the Central Committee Secretariat show an increase after August in the case of a number of organisations. (L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 171.)

The party’s growth was reflected in a whole number of statistics. The first victory was chalked up in the factory committees. This was important because the factory committees were the organisations that most closely reflected the mood of the workers on the shop floor. The factory committees had sprung up immediately after the February Revolution, as the continuation of the strike committees. They were the cutting edge of the struggle for the eight-hour day, which they frequently introduced by their own initiative. The demand for workers’ control advanced by the Bolsheviks met with a ready response from the factory committees, which in many enterprises introduced control over hiring and firing, formed workers’ militias, and combated the attempts of the bosses to sabotage production.

On 30 May–3 June the first congress of factory committees was held in Petrograd. This was the scene of a bitter clash between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks over the role and tasks of the committees. The Mensheviks naturally opposed workers’ control, which clashed with their whole conception of the bourgeois nature of the revolution and the right of the bourgeois to rule. The conference, however, passed the Bolshevik resolution. Lenin took part in this conference, and drafted the resolution ‘On Measures to Cope with Economic Dislocation’, which was carried by a big majority. From the summer of 1917, the factory committees in Petrograd, Moscow, and the Urals were solidly Bolshevik.

There was plenty of other evidence that the Bolsheviks were gaining ground. Even in the elections to town councils, the Bolsheviks were obtaining spectacular results. In the local elections in Petrograd, held in August, they increased their number of seats from 37 to 67, and went into second place behind the SRs who numbered 75. The Cadets had 42, but the Mensheviks saw their numbers reduced from 40 to only 8. This clearly shows the swing to the left. Still more surprising were the results of the local elections in Moscow. Table 6.2 overleaf compares the results with those of the elections in June.

This is significant because for the first time the Bolsheviks got an absolute majority of votes. The June figures refer to the Moscow City Duma elections, whereas the September figures refer to the ward elections. In the latter the participation was not particularly high (50 per cent). However, that does not diminish the importance of the result. It must not be forgotten that elections to parliament and local councils are not the most favourable field for a revolutionary party. It is generally far easier to obtain results in elections to unions or factory committees. This was especially the case in Russia in 1917, when the attention of the masses was concentrated on the Soviets. But still the Bolsheviks, with the aim of reaching the widest layers of society, did not ignore even local elections. The Moscow election result was highly significant because for the first time the Bolsheviks won an absolute majority in an important urban centre.

In Petersburg the same trend was visible, although not quite to the same degree as in Moscow. Between August and November the Bolshevik vote went up from 184,000 to 424,000; the SRs went down from 206,000 to 152,000 and the Cadet vote went up from 114,000 to 274,000. Surprisingly, the Mensheviks also increased their vote from 24,000 to 29,000, but this relative rally cannot disguise the fact that they were now a small minority and had practically been almost wiped out as a real force in the working class in the capital.

1. May in the new calendar. Schapiro is referring to the April Conference.

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