By the autumn, mass meetings were occurring almost daily in all the industrial towns and cities throughout Russia. Huge opportunities opened up as the RDSLP rapidly gained ground among advanced workers. Absolutely key for the successful linking of the small number of organised Marxists to the broad mass of workers in struggle, was their attitude towards the St Petersburg Soviet. Lenin immediately grasped the significance of this new phenomenon, writing from exile:
“I may be wrong, but I believe … that politically the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of a provisional revolutionary government. I think the Soviet should proclaim itself the provisional revolutionary government of the whole of Russia as early as possible, or should set up a provisional revolutionary government …”[47].
On the key issue of what attitude to take towards the Soviet and in opposition to the Bolshevik committee-men, Trotsky and Lenin were in full de-facto agreement:
“In Petersburg, I continued working together with comrade Krasin [one of only two the members of the Bolshevik CC not arrested in February 1905] and at the same time kept in touch with the Menshevik group. At the centre of all our discussions in that period were the question of the armed uprising, the workers’ government, the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants. In the spring the Menshevik groups supported my theses on the necessity of preparing for an armed uprising and for the seizure of power by a provisional revolutionary government.”[48].
Trotsky also described the initial attitude of the leading local Bolshevik committee-men:
“The section of the Bolshevik Central Committee led by Bogdanov which was in Petersburg was flatly against the creation of a non-party organisation. … I was present at the meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee … where tactics in relation to the soviet were worked out. Bogdanov put forward the following plan: to propose to the soviet in the name of the Bolshevik faction that it immediately accept the Social Democrat programme and overall leadership by the party …. the meeting adopted Bogdanov’s plan. … Some days later, after comrade Lenin’s arrival, the Bolsheviks’ view of the soviet changed in principle ….”[49].
Sverchkov confirmed Trotsky’s description of events: “The Petersburg Bolsheviks decided that the Soviet had officially to adopt the programme of the Social Democrat Party. They put this before the Soviet with the threat that if it was rejected, they would immediately leave the Soviet. … the vast majority of the Soviet consisted of Social Democrats … (and) we ourselves categorically rose up in arms against this proposal”[50]. Zinoviev confirmed: “A section of the Bolsheviks had made the mistake of demanding that the Soviet officially adopt the Social Democrat Party programme. But Lenin … soon corrected this major mistake”[51]. It was an indication of future events (in 1917) that when Lenin intervened to pull the Bolsheviks away from their sectarian attitude, his letter Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies to the Bolshevik journal New Life was rejected![52]. Gorev, a Bolshevik present at the time later wrote:
“Lenin put an end to this negative approach to the soviet of deputies. …. His impression of the Petersburg soviet, to which he was taken clandestinely, is particularly interesting. … There were about 500 people there in all. It made a tremendous impression. Lenin sat silent and listened. After the session, a small group of us took him to the Vienna restaurant to celebrate his return, and we stayed there until morning. Lenin began to chastise the members of the (Bolshevik) committee for being completely incapable of appreciating the enormous force represented by the soviet and putting forward ridiculous proposals that the soviet should subordinate itself to them. He then said that the soviet was also the embryo of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry which he had been propagandising since the summer … ‘Let the peasants join it as well’ he said ‘and it will be a soviet of workers’ and peasants’ deputies, an organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’”[53].
In Our Tasks and the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and Socialism and Anarchism, both written in November 1905, Lenin spelled out how he saw the development of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies into a provisional revolutionary government. The Soviet was “not a labour parliament and not an organ of proletarian self-government, (it was) a fighting organisation for the achievement of definite aims”[54]. The Soviet should proclaim itself the provisional (and therefore temporary) revolutionary government with a democratic programme that included: the complete and immediate realisation of political freedom, the repeal of all legislation restricting freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, the press, association and strikes. The membership of the Soviet should be broad and mixed, and Lenin specifically called for the inclusion of the Union of Unions – rejected by the Soviet – because the goals of that organisation included the convocation of a National Assembly which fitted well with Lenin’s aim of an Assembly “that would enjoy the support of a free and armed people and have full authority and strength to establish a new order in Russia”[55].
It has been hypothesised by, for example, Woods[56] that what prevented Trotsky from joining the Bolsheviks in late 1905 was the conduct of the Bolshevik committee-men in St Petersburg. Woods is undoubtedly correct in his appreciation of Trotsky’s attitude to the formalism of the committee-men, but Trotsky, despite his outstanding and heroic role as leader of the St Petersburg Soviet, had not overcome his conciliationism, his focus on the reunification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and would certainly not have made a move to join either faction prior to the Unity Conference. Additionally, Trotsky and Lenin were beginning to develop differences on the class nature of the unfolding Russian Revolution. The concept of the Permanent Revolution was stirring in Trotsky’s mind, while Lenin, at the Third (Bolshevik-only) Congress, had already begun to introduce the concept of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship which he would subsequently codify and elaborate as the RDDPP in numerous articles and pamphlets, beginning in June – July 1905 with the publication of Two Tactics.
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Lenin, V.I., Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, Nov 1905, CW 10:21
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Trotsky’s letter to the Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the RCP(B) of the State Publishing House saying he did not have time to write an introduction to Sverchov’s book, quoted in Revolutionary History, Vol 9 No 1 p117
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Trotsky ibid p117 – 119
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Sverchkov, D., op. cit. p120
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Zinoviev, G., History of the Bolshevik Party, New Park Publications, London, 1973, p128
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Cliff, T.C., Lenin, Building the Party, Pluto Press, 1975, p161
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B Gorev The Bulletin of Revolutionary History No 1 January 1922, quoted in Revolutionary History Vol 9 No 1 p123
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Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Anarchism, 24 Nov 1905, CW 10:71
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Lenin, V.I. Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, 4 Nov 1905, CW 10:24-25
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Woods, A., op. cit., p236