The real reason for Lenin’s insistence on immediate action was his fear that the party leaders would vacillate, would not proceed to prepare to take power and thus miss the opportunity. Once the moment is lost, it may take many years to return. Precisely for this reason a party and a leadership is necessary. Lenin was probably doubtful about the new members of the CC, Joffe and Uritsky, who had come over with the Mezhraiontsy and whom he did not know. Would they not be conciliators? And would Trotsky fall into line with Kamenev and Zinoviev? In his mistrust of the new members of the CC he was mistaken. They stood, like Trotsky, firmly on the left. But the ferocious resistance put up by his old comrades Kamenev, Zinoviev, and, though more guardedly, Stalin, was a bitter blow.
At every decisive turning point there were fierce controversies and polemics in the leadership. Such a controversy broke out over the question of participating in the Democratic Conference. This was a manoeuvre of the Mensheviks and SRs on the Central Executive of the Soviets who felt that power was slipping from their hands. In theory the Conference was called by the Executive in order to decide the question of power, but in practice it was to throw dust in the eyes of the masses, to divert attention away from the rising tide of revolution and into harmless speechifying and paper projects. The reformist leaders did their best to reduce the representation of the workers and peasants, and heavily weight the Conference in favour of petty bourgeois elements. They were trying to set up an alternative to the Soviets, where their influence was declining by the hour. To Lenin’s disgust, the Bolshevik Central Committee voted to participate in this charade and circulated party organisations to “do their utmost to build up the largest possible well-knit group of delegates from among our Party members”. (LCW, vol. 26, p. 530, note 4.)
Lenin was more than doubtful about this decision, but grudgingly went along with it, on condition that the Bolsheviks demonstratively separate themselves from all other tendencies and read out a statement to expose the Soviet leaders. The declaration stated that:
In struggling for the power in order to realise its programme, our party has never desired and does not desire to seize the power against the organised will of the majority of the toiling masses of the country.
Of this statement, Trotsky writes:
That meant: We will take the power as the party of the Soviet majority. Those words about “the organised will of the toiling masses” referred to the coming Congress of Soviets. “Only such decisions and proposals of the present Conference… can find their way to realisation” said the Declaration, “as are recognised by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets…” (L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 836.)
The decision to participate in the Democratic Conference was actually a mistake, as Lenin later stated, but a relatively minor one, and easily rectified. Far more serious was the decision of the Bolshevik delegation at the Conference to agree to participate in the so-called pre-parliament that had been agreed there. This was a blunder of the first order. The move to set up a kind of ‘caretaker government’ was a transparent attempt by the reformist leaders to create the impression that Russia now had a parliamentary system, when the pre-parliament was merely an appendage of the bourgeois Provisional Government with only consultative rights. This was clearly a reactionary manoeuvre. Yet the Bolshevik delegates voted by 77 to 50 to take part in it. This move split the Central Committee, with Trotsky leading the fight to boycott the pre-parliament. Lenin, already worried that the Bolshevik leaders were wasting time, was beside himself with rage and frustration. He flatly demanded that the Bolsheviks withdraw from the pre-parliament and dedicate all their energies to preparing the insurrection.
In a footnote to the article in which he declared the participation in the Democratic Conference to have been a mistake and demanded the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the pre-parliament, Lenin writes:
Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo, Comrade Trotsky! Boycottism was defeated in the Bolshevik group at the Democratic Conference. Long live the boycott!
We cannot and must not under any circumstances reconcile ourselves to participation. A group at one of the conferences is not the highest organ of the party and even the decisions of the highest organs are subject to revision on the basis of experience.
We must at all costs strive to have the boycott question solved both at a plenary meeting of the Executive Committee and at an extraordinary Party congress. The boycott question must now be made the platform for elections to the Congress and for all elections inside the Party. We must draw the masses into the discussion of this question. Class-conscious workers must take the matter into their own hands, organise the discussion, and exert pressure on ‘those at the top’.
There is not the slightest doubt that at the ‘top’ of our Party there are noticeable vacillations that may become ruinous, because the struggle is developing; under certain conditions, at a certain moment, vacillations may ruin the cause. We must put all our forces into the struggle, we must uphold the correct line of the party of the revolutionary proletariat before it is too late.
Not all is well with the ‘parliamentary’ leaders of our Party; greater attention must be paid to them, there must be greater workers’ supervision over them; the competency of parliamentary groups must be more clearly defined.
Our Party’s mistake is obvious. The fighting party of the advanced class need not fear mistakes. What it should fear is persistence in a mistake, refusal to admit and correct a mistake out of a false sense of shame. (LCW, From a Publicist’s Diary, vol. 26, pp. 57-58.)
Finally, not without a sharp struggle in the CC, in which Kamenev opposed withdrawing from the pre-parliament, Lenin’s advice was accepted and the Bolsheviks walked out on the first day, having first read out a declaration which ended in the cry: “Long live the direct and open struggle for revolutionary power in the country!”
On the day before Trotsky led the Bolsheviks out of the pre-parliament, the Central Committee met, at Lenin’s insistence, to discuss once more the question of insurrection. Given the urgency of the situation, Lenin came from Finland in disguise, complete with actor’s wig. But there was nothing either comic or theatrical about this discussion, upon which hinged the destiny of the revolution. Lenin tore into the compromisers on the CC. The minutes read:
Comrade Lenin maintains that a sort of indifference to the question of insurrection has been noticeable since the beginning of September. But this is impermissible if we are issuing the slogan of the seizure of power by the Soviets in all seriousness. It is therefore high time to pay attention to the technical aspect of the question. Apparently a lot of time has already been lost. (LCW, Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) 10 (23) October, 1917, vol. 26, p. 188.)
And he goes on to enumerate the reasons why the Bolsheviks should take power without delay. Significantly, he refers first to the international situation. The news of mutinies in the German fleet, of strikes of the Czech workers, and demonstrations and barricades in Italy indicated that the conditions for revolution were ripening on a world scale: “Take a glance at the international situation. The growth of a world revolution is beyond dispute,” Lenin wrote in his Letter to the Bolshevik Comrades. (LCW, Letter to the Bolshevik Comrades Attending the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, vol. 26, p. 182.)
Delay was impermissible because the fate of the revolution was in the balance. Either the Bolsheviks took power, or Kerensky would go onto the offensive against the Soviets. Red Petrograd could be surrendered to the Germans, and the Constituent Assembly put off indefinitely: “What is being done to surrender territory as far as Narva, and to surrender Petrograd makes it still more imperative for us to take decisive action.” And again, the same warning: the masses are tired of words and resolutions. They will begin to see the Bolsheviks as the same as all the other parties if they do not act to take power:
Absenteeism and indifference on the part of the masses is due to their being tired of words and resolutions. We now have the majority behind us. Politically, the situation is fully ripe for taking power. (LCW, Meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) 10 (23) October, 1917, vol. 26, p. 188.)
How do we explain the crises and vacillations in the Bolshevik leadership during the course of 1917? If we set out from an idealised conception of the Bolshevik Party, this question cannot be answered.
How could it happen that Lenin, whom we have seen at the beginning of April isolated among the leaders of his own party, found himself again solitary in the same group in September and early October? This cannot be understood if you believe the unintelligent legend which portrays the history of Bolshevism as an emanation of the pure revolutionary idea. In reality Bolshevism developed in a definite social milieu undergoing its heterogeneous influences and among them the influence of a petty bourgeois environment and of cultural backwardness. To each new situation the party adapted itself only by way of an inner crisis. (L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 989.)
It is a law that, as the date of the insurrection approaches, the leadership of the revolutionary party comes under extreme pressure from alien classes, and a section begins to vacillate. The reason for this is not hard to find. The exact appraisal of the mood of the masses is never easy to determine. Given the colossal responsibility that weighs on the shoulders of the leadership in such a moment, the serious risks entailed in every decision, the pressure of bourgeois ‘public opinion’, nerves are stretched to breaking point and all weaknesses stand cruelly exposed. Yet on the eve of insurrection, weakness and vacillation can be afforded least of all.