On 28 January 1917 (prior to the Mensheviks and SRs voicing their opposition), the Petrograd Soviet sent a directive to each factory to organise a workers’ militia. This gave the green light to local activities and received an enthusiastic response, typifying direct proletarian self-assertion. By the end of February, workers militias had sprung up in most of the factories, and by the start of March some 20,000 militia men were under arms in Petrograd alone[64].
The longstanding, formal position of the Bolsheviks (though only the grass roots acted on it in early 1917) was to support the creation of workers’ militias and Red Guards, and when both the Mensheviks and SRs counter-posed a militia loyal to the city dumas they de facto ensured that the bands of armed men that would form the power of the Soviet state remained firmly in Bolshevik hands alone. The Bolsheviks formed Soviet militias under their control in all provinces and towns with a proletarian element, including those areas where the Left SRs had their strongholds[65]. Arming the workers had been explicit Bolshevik policy from 1905, so the existence of an armed workers’ militia does not offer a criterion by which to judge whether the goal of the 1917 Revolution was a Constituent Assembly or Commune-type state, a RDDPP, or a dictatorship of the proletariat – however, the actions taken by the Red Guards after the October Revolution do.
In Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power[66], the state order that followed the revolution would be based on the activities of the Red Guards, and Lenin gives examples of how it would be the workers’ militia that would determine day-to-day decision-making in the new state. This makes the activities of the Red Guard very important – would the armed might of the workers remain outside the factory gates, or would it flow into the factory? In fact, the spontaneous actions of the workers’ militia confirmed Trotsky’s central prediction that if the armed workers held the power outside the factory gate, that authority would naturally spill over into a direct challenge to the management and ownership of the enterprises. Dune described how, as soon as the news of the revolution reached his factory, the workers disarmed the owners’ factory guard, took their weapons (revolvers and sabres) and formed a “revolutionary defence force”[67]. He went on to say that the factory committee elected by all the workers took over day-to-day running of the factory, but that none of the Mensheviks in the factory joined the Red Guard and left it to the Bolsheviks[68].
Given the geographic and social distribution of Russian society – the workers had to live close to their factories, public transport was a luxury they could not afford – the workers’ militias and Red Guard units were, of necessity, factory-based, since there was no realistic alternative. Such a structure posed a serious practical problem for the theory of the RDDPP, but lent great strength to the ToPR. As Wade reported:
“For the factory workers and their factory committees, then, the presence of factory-based armed units gave emphasis to their demands. … Indeed, the coercive relationship between the management and workers was reversed. Now the workers had arms … whereas management had lost its factory guards and the ultimate threat of government police and troops”[69].
Just as Trotsky had predicted, based on his experience of 1905, the workers saw no reason to keep the Red Guards outside the factory gate, quite the opposite, Red Guards provided the muscle to support workers’ demands for a larger voice in the factories and, even, workers’ seizure of the factories[70]. After October, the Red Guards right across Russia, gradually extended their control beyond the environs of the factories and took responsibility for security within the cities and larger towns, exercising political control by breaking up opponents’ demonstrations and meetings, arresting participants and seizing their weapons.
Wade reported that up to the October Revolution, workers were in the majority in the Red Guard units across Russia, typically at least 60%, rising to about 80% in the industrial centres and over 90% in Petrograd[71]. He showed that while the Bolsheviks were initially a minority of the rank and file of the Red Guard, as 1917 progressed they assumed an increasingly important role in leadership, and by October held nearly all the senior positions[72], at which time Wade estimates there were between 100,000 and 200,000 Red Guards in Russia, a key force because – unlike the peasant soldiers in the army – they were prepared to fight (and die) for the revolution[73].
Carr confirms that the leaders of the Bolshevik Party had no further plans for socialisation of the economy after the nationalisation of the banking and credit institutions and the decree for workers’ control of industry on 14 November, but:
“… the innumerable economic conflicts that had gone on before October now multiplied, and indeed became more serious as the combativity of the contestants was everywhere greater. The initiative for acts of expropriation, undertaken as necessities of struggle rather than according to any design for socialism, came from the masses rather than the government. It was only eight months later, in June 1918, that the government adopted the great decrees of nationalisation, under the pressure of foreign intervention. …
The liquidation of the political defences of their capitalist exploiters launched a spontaneous movement among the workers to take over the means of production. Since they were perfectly able to take control of the factories and workshops, why should they abstain? The employers sabotage of production entailed expropriation as an act of reprisal. When the boss brought work to a halt, the workers themselves, on their own responsibility, got the establishment going again. [Council of Peoples’ Commissars had to decree the nationalisation of Russo-Belgian Metal Company’s factories, the Putilov works, the Smirnov spinning-mills and the power station belonging to the 1886 Electrical Company.]”[74].
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Wade, R. A., Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1984, p59-60
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p219-221
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Lenin, V.I., Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power, October 1917, CW 26:112
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Dune, E. M., Notes of a Red Guard, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1993, p36
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Dune, E. M., Ibid, p38
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p67
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p299
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p279, Table 3 et seq.
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p285
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Wade, R. A., op cit, p294-295
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Carr, E.H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923. Three Volumes. Pelican, 1983, 1:135-138