The acid test of any theory is how well it measures up to reality. It has been seen that in Lenin’s 1905 theory of the provisional RDDPP, the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution would take place prior to the solution of the agrarian question, would hopefully inspire a successful socialist revolution in Western Europe which would guarantee the gains of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and would lead to the Russian socialist revolution. However, in 1917, in the run-up to the October Revolution, Lenin saw the immediate goals of the Bolshevik Party as taking state and governmental power, initiating the dictatorship of the proletariat, taking the first steps towards socialism and solving the agrarian question as a by-product of the proletarian, socialist revolution. Here the 1905 schema is turned on its head and, in accord with the ToPR, the Russian socialist revolution precedes the European.
The tactics and methods by which Lenin and the Bolsheviks waged their struggle immediately prior to October 1917, ensured the Bolshevik Party took power, that is, the Bolshevik Party alone took power. There was no call for, nor necessity of, an alliance with any other party to carry through the revolution. The bodies of armed men that comprised the power of the resulting state were the Red Guards, and those sailors and regiments within the army supporting the Bolsheviks.
In September, Lenin first demanded that the Bolshevik Party proceed immediately with the insurrection[103]. In October, Lenin insisted that the Revolution be planned, organised and led independently of the Soviets, that to wait for the endorsement of the Congress of Soviets would be both a “disgrace and a betrayal”[104]. In his theses for the Petrograd Conference of 8 October, Lenin wanted the Party to press ahead with the insurrection, that to wait for the Congress of Soviets was to fall prey to constitutional illusions[105]. A direct consequence of Lenin’s insistence that the revolution should be directed by the Central Committee of the RDSLP(B), and that the Bolshevik party alone took power, was that the initial government following the October Revolution was a Bolshevik-only government. In fact, contradicting the theory of the RDDPP, what Lenin proposed narrowed the base of the revolution.
However, the Central Committee did not accept the insurrection should be carried out in the name of the party and instead, following Trotsky, linked the insurrection with the forthcoming Second Soviet Congress. This difference of opinion was not a question of principle, but rather a tactical and psychological issue which, almost certainly, reflected the two men’s experiences in 1905. Trotsky was determined to gain maximum support and co-operation from the Left SRs, the Menshevik Internationalists and non-aligned delegates to the Soviets. Lenin feared that the opportunity for insurrection could be lost, fears that the behaviour of Kamenev and Zinoviev would prove justified. It was Trotsky, proponent of the ToPR, who sought to include representatives of the peasant party in the actual struggle for power. It was Lenin who was lukewarm and who, by no stretch of the imagination, indicated the Left SRs were essential to either the uprising or the resulting regime.
Lenin’s proposals showed that, quite contrary to the spirit of the RDDPP, he saw no need for any co-ordination of effort with the peasantry in the armed uprising. The urban working class would take the power alone. It was Trotsky who argued that to organise the insurrection and carry it out under the slogan of defending that Soviet Congress, would have the huge advantage of giving the insurrection a legal cover in the eyes of all the non-Bolsheviks in the Soviets. “… under the slogan of a struggle for the Second Soviet Congress we won over to our side the bayonets of the revolutionary army and consolidated our gains organisationally”[106]. The October Revolution was so bloodless because of Trotsky’s strategy.
The initial Workers’ and Peasants’ Government that was formed following the October Revolution was a Bolshevik-only government. The Bolsheviks invited the Left SRs to join as junior partners, but the offer was initially refused in the hope of pressurising the Bolsheviks to bring all the socialist parties into a coalition government[107]. The Left SRs did join the government, but not until mid-December, and withdrew only three months later – they wished to continue the war, and would not agree to the peace conditions negotiated by the Bolsheviks. During this time there was a two-class government, but it should be noted that the Left SRs joined the government after the major bourgeois-democratic task (land to the peasants) had been accomplished and withdrew well before the bourgeois-democratic tasks were completed. [Two small groups split from the Left SRs and remained in government with the Bolsheviks.]
Lenin’s open letter written in early November 1917 (one month before the Left SRs joined the government), makes clear the process by which the Left SRs found themselves in the government, the conditions placed on their role in government, and the specific weight Lenin placed on gaining their support:
“The majority at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets belonged to the Bolshevik Party. Therefore the only Soviet Government is the one formed by that Party. … the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party … summoned to its session three of the most prominent members of the group of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, … and invited them to join the new government. We very much regret that the Left Socialist-Revolutionary comrades refused … We are ready at any moment to include Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the government, but we declare that, as the majority party at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, we are entitled to form the government, and it is our duty to the people to do so.
Everybody knows that the Central Committee of our Party submitted a purely Bolshevik list of People’s Commissars to the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, and that the Congress approved this list of a purely Bolshevik government.
The statements to the effect that the Bolshevik government is not a Soviet Government are therefore pure lies, and come, and can come, only from the enemies of the people, from the enemies of Soviet power. On the contrary, now, after the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, and until the Third Congress meets, or until new elections to the Soviets are held, or until a new government is formed by the Central Executive Committee, only a Bolshevik government can be regarded as the Soviet Government.”[108]
The evidence is incontestable – Lenin welcomed support from the Left SRs but did not consider it essential in order to form a government. The Bolsheviks took power through an armed uprising and formed a government, both without support of the Left SR Party. Whatever the relative numerical strengths of the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, Lenin was in favour of an alliance with them, but not reliance on them. In the same letter, Lenin also described the conditions set on the participation of the Left SRs in the government:
“We agreed, and still agree, to share power with the minority in the Soviets, provided that minority loyally and honestly undertake to submit to the majority and carry out the programme, approved by the whole Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, for gradual, but firm and undeviating steps towards socialism”[109].
That is: any party could join the government if it agreed to enact core Bolshevik policy as accepted by the Second Soviet Congress. It should be remembered that the fundamental agricultural policy – land to the peasant – was enacted by this Bolshevik-only government some two months before the peasant party joined, making the participation of a peasant party in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government desirable, but not essential. The departure of the Left SRs from the government had no resonance in the countryside and the news of their departure was received without any recorded dissent amongst the peasant masses.
Radkey describes the Left SRs as, largely, a party of the peasant soldiers who, he estimated, comprised two-thirds their support. This was an important factor in the rapid disintegration of the Left SRs after their withdrawal from the government in mid-March 1918. Peace now, and land to the peasant were what the soldiers wanted, and it was the Bolsheviks who gave these to them, not the Left SR leadership. In fact, Bolshevism better represented the interests of the soldier base of the Left SR Party, than did the Left SR leadership. “The soldiers and sailors who at first had followed the Left SRs now streamed into the Bolshevik fold”110.
Here is how Trotsky described the Left SRs in his History of the Russian Revolution,
“… the Left Social Revolutionaries … split off in the form of an independent party, to inscribe in the book of revolution one of its most fantastic pages. This was the last flare-up of self-sufficient intellectual radicalism, and a few months after October there remained nothing of it but a small heap of ashes”[111].
For Lenin to emphasise the Bolshevik nature of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, and to adopt a certain ‘take it or leave it’ attitude towards the only peasant party willing to participate, must – given his previous emphasis on the necessity for an alliance between workers and peasants – indicate that he considered the Bolsheviks had enormously increased their influence in the countryside. Here is what Lenin had to say about how the Bolsheviks won the peasantry away from their traditional loyalty to the SRs, both Left and Right:
“.. the proletariat can, and must, at once, or at all events very quickly, win from the bourgeoisie and from petty-bourgeois democrats ’their’ masses, i.e., the masses which follow them – win them by satisfying their most urgent economic needs in a revolutionary way by expropriating the landowners and the bourgeoisie. …
That is exactly how the Russian proletariat won the peasantry from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and won them literally a few hours after achieving state power; a few hours after the victory over the bourgeoisie in Petrograd, the victorious proletariat issued a ‘decree on land’, and in that decree it entirely, at once, with revolutionary swiftness, energy and devotion, satisfied all the most urgent economic needs of the majority of the peasants, it expropriated the landowners, entirely and without compensation.
To prove to the peasants that the proletarians did not want to steam-roller them, did not want to boss them, but to help them and be their friends, the victorious Bolsheviks did not put a single word of their own into that “decree on land”, but copied it, word for word, from the peasant mandates (the most revolutionary of them, of course) which the Socialist-Revolutionaries had published in the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper”[112].
While Lenin may have been a little optimistic in writing that the Bolsheviks won the support of the peasantry in just a ‘few hours’, his analysis is clear – the Bolsheviks won the support of the peasantry, and won it quickly. The Bolsheviks alone could embody the necessary alliance between workers and peasants because only the dictatorship of the proletariat could end feudal relations in agriculture. In March 1918 Lenin reminded delegates to the Soviets that the Left SRs had remained in the SR Party until the previous October, during the period when it was acting as an agent of imperialism and keeping the war going. He went further, “the party of the Left SRs is losing votes, it deserves to, … (it) is the same soap bubble amongst the peasantry as it proved to be amongst the working class”[113].
Interestingly, the party which received the majority of the peasant vote, 37 out of 43 provinces, and so could be said to be the party representing the peasants in the countryside – the SR Party – never offered any serious opposition to the Bolsheviks. With the decree on land the Bolsheviks emasculated the SRs. Later, after January 1918, the SR Party sealed its demise by calling for the Constituent Assembly to be the government, which the peasants saw as a threat to their occupation of the land. The SR Party which had already lost the support of most peasant soldiers in all but the most far-flung armies by the October Revolution [support for which was the cause of the split with the Left SRs], subsequently lost the support of the peasants in the villages[114].
In The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Lenin describes his thinking in the run-up to the October Revolution, and the calculations he made of the forces on which the Bolsheviks could rely, and those that would be opposed to the armed insurrection. He explains that the Bolsheviks were victorious because they had behind them the vast majority of the proletariat (especially the most class-conscious, energetic and revolutionary sections), the support of the two metropolitan cities, and an overwhelming majority in the armed forces nearest to Moscow and Petrograd. That is, the Bolsheviks had an overwhelming superiority of forces at the decisive points at the decisive moment. He goes on to say that the armies which appeared loyal to the SRs, were on the Rumanian and Caucasian fronts, far from the main cities. If the Bolsheviks successfully took governmental power into their hands through armed insurrection, they would have the time and opportunity to win the peasants and the remainder of the army rank and file away from the SR Party. He said “the victorious proletariat issued a ‘decree on land’, and in that decree it entirely, at once, with revolutionary swiftness, energy and devotion, satisfied all the most urgent economic needs of the majority of the peasants, it expropriated the landowners, entirely and without compensation.”[115]. But he was unambiguous, land to the peasant – the key bourgeois-democratic demand – was carried out by a Bolshevik-only government, after the assumption of power by the proletariat, after the victory of the proletarian, socialist revolution. His description of actual events bears an uncanny resemblance to Trotsky’s predictions made in Results and Prospects, ”The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the class which has emancipated it.”
A complete list of the articles in which Lenin referred to the October Revolution as socialist and the state that resulted as the dictatorship of the proletariat, could be useful but there are just too many. Following are six passages selected by the author as typical and an accurate representation of Lenin’s assessment.
14 November 1917:
“… the full implementation of all the measures constituting the law on land is possible only if the workers’ socialist revolution which began on October 25 is successful, for only the socialist revolution can ensure the transfer of the land to the working peasantry without compensation. …
A necessary condition for the victory of the socialist revolution, which alone can secure the lasting triumph and full implementation of the law on land, is the close alliance of the working and exploited peasantry with the working class – the proletariat – in all the advanced countries”[116].
13 December 1917:
“There can be no doubt at all that the October Revolution, carried out by the workers, peasants and soldiers, is a socialist one”[117].
10-18 January 1918:
“We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how difficult is the road that leads from capitalism to socialism. But it is our duty to say that our Soviet Republic is a socialist republic because we have taken this road”[118].
6-8 March 1918:
“The Revolution of October 25, 1917 in Russia brought about the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has been supported by the poor peasants or semi-proletarians … confronts the Communist Party in Russia with the task of carrying through to the end, of completing, the expropriation of the landowners and bourgeoisie that has already begun, and the transfer of all factories, railways, banks, the fleet and other means of production and exchange to ownership by the Soviet Republic …”[119].
April 1919:
“How is it that one of the most backward countries of Europe was the first country to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and to organise a Soviet republic?”[120].
7 November 1919:
“We accomplished instantly, at one revolutionary blow, all that can, in general, be accomplished instantly; on the first day of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for instance, on October 26, 1917, the private ownership of land was abolished without compensation for the big landowners – the big landowners were expropriated. Within the space of a few months practically all the big capitalists, owners of factories, joint-stock companies, banks, railways, and so forth, were also expropriated without compensation. The state organisation of large-scale production in industry and the transition from “workers’ control” to “workers’ management” of factories and railways – this has, by and large, already been accomplished; but in relation to agriculture it has only just begun”[121].
It is possible to go on and on. One looks in vain for Lenin to analyse or describe post-October Russia in terms qualitatively different from those above. Lenin consistently referred to the October Revolution as socialist, with a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government resting on the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course, the October Revolution was a democratic revolution in terms of the first tasks it had to carry out, and in that sense, was a great democratic revolution – but the bourgeois-democratic tasks could be completed only because the state power was the dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the mass of peasants. The strictly bourgeois-democratic tasks, e.g., votes for women, abolition of the autocracy and ending feudal relations on the land, had to be implemented, but now they intermingled with the first steps towards socialism, e.g., workers’ control and nationalisation of the banks.
Lenin in his published works, repeated many times that the Bolshevik, proletarian, socialist revolution did not skip the bourgeois-democratic stage of land to the peasant. This was obviously true (private ownership of land was abolished, land became the property of the whole people and passed to those who cultivated it) and was the basis for Bolshevik support amongst the peasantry. Much more importantly, he also claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution was a necessary pre-requirement for carrying through the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution to its end.
Lenin, with Trotsky, organised the October Revolution and brought into power the first dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin, Trotsky, and all the Bolshevik leaders agreed that the dictatorship of the proletariat began in Russia with the October Revolution. The Russian Revolution was the beginning of the international revolution and was openly socialist in its objectives right from the start. The issue is not so much the immediate tasks that the Bolsheviks set themselves, but the goals they served. Lenin was convinced that the Bolshevik Party, having seized state and governmental power, had set in motion events that would take the revolution into the countryside, but he knew that real processes took time, and did not even suggest socialist measures in the countryside until the summer of 1918.
-
Lenin, V.I., Marxism and Insurrection, September 1917, CW, 26:27
-
Lenin, V.I., Letter to the Central Committee, the Moscow and Petrograd Committees and the Bolshevik Members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, October 1917, CW 26:141
-
Lenin, V.I., Ibid, CW 26:144
-
Trotsky, L.D., Lessons of October in The Challenge of the Left Opposition Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975, p241
-
Daniels, R.V., Red October, Secker and Warburg, London, 1967, p202-203
-
Lenin, V.I., From the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), November 1917, CW 26:303-4
-
Lenin, V.I., Ibid, CW 26:307
-
Trotsky, L.D., History of the Russian Revolution. Three volumes, Sphere Books Ltd, London, 1967, Vol. 3, p279-280
-
Lenin, V.I., The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, December 1919, CW 30:264-5
-
Lenin, V.I., Extraordinary 4th All-Russian Congress of Soviets March 14-16 1918, Reply to the debate on the Report on Ratification of the Peace Treaty, March 1918, CW 27:193 [Lenin is referring to a passage in the SR paper three days after the insurrection “The Bolshevik … adventure like a soap bubble will burst at the first contact with hard facts” quoted in A. Kopp Town and Revolution London 1967, 1-2]
-
Radkey, O.H., The Sickle Under the Hammer, Columbia University Press, 1963, p451
-
Lenin, V.I., The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, December 1919, CW 30:265
-
Lenin, V.I., Draft Resolution for the All Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies, November 1917, CW 26:327-8
-
Lenin, V.I., Speech at the Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Railwaymen, December, 1917, CW 26:384,
-
Lenin, V.I., Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, January 1918, CW 26:465
-
Lenin, V.I., Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), March 1918, CW 27:139
-
Lenin, V.I., The Third International and its Place in History, April 1919, CW 29:307-308
-
Lenin, V.I., Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, November 1919, CW 30:109