Co

Coalition Provisional Government

The coalition Provisional Government was formed as a result of a crisis caused by a note which the Minster of Foreign Affairs (Milyukov) had sent to the Allied governments on April 18 (May 1), 1917; confirming the Provisional Government's readiness to honour all the treaties which the tsarist government had concluded with Britain and France, which meant a continuation of World War I with the intention of destroying Germany and Austria, with the annexation of their outlying territories and the division of their overseas colonies.

Massive spontaneous demonstrations of workers and soldiers erupted against the continuation of war, which reached a head on April 20 and 21 (May 3 and 4). The Provisional Government accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Milyukov and War Minister Guchkov, and made a proposal to the Petrograd Soviet to form a coalition government, while the war raged on.

Despite its decision of March 1 (14) forbidding members of the Soviet to join the Provisional Government, the Soviet's Executive Committee, at a special meeting held on the night of May 1 (14), accepted the proposal of the Provisional Government. At the preliminary meetings of the party groups in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks were the only group to come out against it. The decision to have representatives of the Soviet join the government was carried by 44 votes to 19 with two abstentions. A commission authorised to negotiate the terms for forming a coalition government was elected, consisting of:

Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Dan, Bogdanov – Mensheviks;
Stankevich, Bramson – Trudoviks;
Gots, Chernov – SRs;
Kamenev – Bolshevik;
Yurenev – member of the Inter-District group;
Sukhanov – independent Social-Democrat.

On the evening of May 2 (15) an emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was called at which the action of the Executive Committee was approved by a majority vote. After the negotiations an agreement was reached on May 5 (18) for the distribution of posts in the new government as a result of which 6 Socialist ministers were to join the cabinet:

Kerensky (SR) – War and Naval Minister,
Skobelev (M) – Labour Minister,
Chernov (SR) –Minister of Agriculture,
Pesheklionov (PS) – Minister of Food Supply,
Tsereteli (M) – Minister of Post and Telegraph,
Pereverzev (~SR) – Minister of Justice.

On the evening of May 5(18) the Petrograd Soviet, after hearing Skobelev's report on the results of the negotiations with the Provisional Government, decided to have its representatives join the government on condition that they were answerable and accountable to the Soviet, and expressed full confidence in the new government. The coalition provisional government replaced the former Contact Commission

Communists

Those who actively support the interests of the working-class as a whole, without any kind of prejudice. Communists live to unite workers, instead of divide them along imaginery lines, whether based on gender, nationality, race, or ideology.

"In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

"They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.

"The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:

(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

"The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

"The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

"The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

"They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.

Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Chpt 2: Proletarians and Communists

See also: Communism (the political system)

Historical Development: The first Communist program was defined in feudalist England in the 1500s, by Thomas More, in his work Utopia (1516). It was a nostalgic and idealist look to primitive communism, seeing those social relations as far superior to the feudalist system of gross inequality and extreme oppression. With the idea of a Utopian society, early Communists believed that they needed only to convince the aristocracy of the possibility of this world, and it could be achieved. Over the next two hundred years communist practice slightly evolved; instead of demanding solely for the political rights of the oppressed, Utopian Communists focused on science a little further, and began to demand a change in the existing social conditions of humanity.

It was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but class distinctions themselves. A Communism, ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, was the first form of the new teaching. Then came the three great Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a certain significance; Fourier and Owen, who in the country where capitalist production was most developed, and under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in direct relation to French materialism.

One thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they see it, is as far as Heaven from Earth, from that of the French philosophers.

For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds its way to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism and all the earlier stages of society. If pure reason and justice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the case only because men have not rightly understood them. What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.

We saw how the French philosophers of the 18th century, the forerunners of the Revolution, appealed to reason as the sole judge of all that is. A rational government, rational society, were to be founded; everything that ran counter to eternal reasons was to be remorselessly done away with. We saw also that this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealized understand of the 18th century citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois. The French Revolution had realized this rational society and government.

But the new order of things, rational enough as compared with earlier conditions, turned out to be by no means absolutely rational. The state based upon reason completely collapsed. Rousseau's Contrat Social had found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their own political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corruption of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing of the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society based upon reason had fared no better.

The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into general prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church. The "freedom of property" from feudal fetters, now veritably accomplished, turned out to be, for the small capitalists and small proprietors, the freedom to sell their small property, crushed under the overmastering competition of the large capitalists and landlords, to these great lords, and thus, as far as the small capitalists and peasant proprietors were concerned, became "freedom from property". The development of industry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society. Cash payment became more and more, in Carlyle's phrase, the sole nexus between man and man. The number of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly, the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad daylight; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate thrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeois vices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom all the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and greater extent cheating. The "fraternity" of the revolutionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, by gold. The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers. Prostitution increased to an extent never head of. Marriage itself remained, as before, the legally recognized form, the official cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supplemented by rich crops of adultery.

The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

By the middle of the 1800s, a materialist conception of Communist practice was created by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Arising from the outstanding advances in science and technology, which had created the very beginning of the capitalist world system, Marx and Engels could see that history is the movement of class struggles and class cooperation. Marx and Engels explained that workers must unite to be able to achieve a worldwide revolution against the bourgeois class, and thus establish a socialist society. The first successful workers revolution ever carried forward, in part by Communists, was the Paris Commune.

In the later years of Engels, while the writings and ideas of Marxism were really just beginning to spread throughout the world, Communist practice was not advancing as rapidly. Social Democracy prevailed as the leading method of socialism in most countries, i.e. a compromise with bourgeois governments to achieve reforms for the proletariat through existing bourgeois institutions. Notable leaders of social democracy were August Bebel and Karl Kautsky, the latter of who, after Engels death, was considered the leading proponent of Marxism in the world.

The outbreak of the First World War became a defining moment for Communists throughout the world. The Social-Democratic movement took a social-chauvinist position, supporting their own governments in fighting the workers of other nations. A small minority of workers stood up not only in opposition to the war, but preached that soldiers take their rifles and use them on their own governments – thus was the practice of the Communists, militant parties in support of the interests of the working class as a whole. The leading Communists of this period were Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Liebknecht, and Vladimir Lenin . Thereafter, the ranks of social democracy would quickly dwindle, while Communists around the world slowly began to grow.

"The fundamental controversial question around which everything else centered was this: whether or not we should struggle for power; whether or not we should assume power. This alone is ample proof that we were not then dealing with a mere episodic difference of opinion but with two tendencies of the utmost principled significance. The first and principal tendency was proletarian and led to the road of world revolution. The other was "democratic," i.e., petty bourgeois, and led, in the last analysis, to the subordination of proletarian policies to the requirements of bourgeois society in the process of reform. These two tendencies came into hostile conflict over every essential question that arose throughout the year 1917."

Leon Trotsky
The Lessons of October

After the success of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, led by the Bolshevik party , Communist practice gained international renown. In 1918 the Bolshevik Party changed their name to Communist Party, the first political organization to do so since the Communist League. In 1919 the Communist International (Comintern) was founded, and as a precondition for membership all national sections of the Comintern (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, etc.) had to change their name to "Communist," thus moving forward towards distinguishing themselves from the crumbling Social Democracy (and the Second International) of the past.

Around this time, other groups were also using the term Communist. Throughout Europe and Russia after the Russian revolution, various groups called themselves "left-Communists", "council-communists" etc., and remained outside the ranks of the Comintern.

With the majority of Communists following the Russian revolution, Communist practice changed in adherence to the particular conditions of the early 20th-century in Russia. The main, but short-lived, principal of this communist practice was the creation of a socialism based on Soviets , locally elected councils that for a short period ruled the Soviet government . With the onset of War Communism however, Russian Communist practice became much less democratic and instead a dictatorship of the Communist Party in order to suppress counterrevolutionaries. At the end of the Civil War, due to Lenin's steadfast struggles and lucid understanding, the government greatly relaxed its repressive controls once necessary during the Civil War, allowed many political parties into the government, and the NEP was introduced. A great many Communists, however, saw these moves as compromises to capitalism, and believed from their experiences in the Civil War that the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the dictatorship of the Communist Party above all others, both in times of peace and in war.

After the death of Lenin in early 1924, the consolidation of Stalin's faction inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Comintern started taking place. This reaction started to reverse and eventually smashed altogether the internal democracy of the Communist Party, soon almost all the the Party leadership that made the 1917 revolution were arrested. The understanding was that since the communists support the working class as a whole, there is no need for "so-called" democracy, no need for freedom of speech or the press, because the Communist party knows all and does all that is good for the working class. Simply stated, the Soviet Communist Party, and it's major counterpart International Left Opposition, "set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which they shaped and molded the proletarian movement."

The International Left Opposition, was organized to fight against Stalinism inside the CPSU and Comintern. Later organized as the Fourth International, many of their national sections would use the term Communist in their party names as well.

In 1949, after the Chinese revolution, Chinese Communist practice slightly deviated from the Stalinist norm, forming a different approach to the creation of a socialist economy, emphasized by the Great Leap Forward. These differences in building socialism would grow over the years, and by the early 1960s, when Khrushchev was leading the Soviet Union, the differences between Chinese Communist practice and Russian Communist practice became irreconcilable, thus marking a third distinct variation of Communist practice.

Today, all these variations, Maoist, Trotskyist, and Stalinist (in addition to some anarchists, etc.) continue to use Communist in their names.

Communist International (Comintern)

Also called the Third International, created by the Bolsheviks in March 1919, setting up Communist Parties, affiliated to the International, in almost every country in the world. See History of the Communist International.

The Communist International degenerated after the Fourth Congress when in November 1922, Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union and the Comintern was disbanded in 1943 by Stalin, as a gesture of conciliation with the Allied powers. See Final Declaration of the Comintern.

Communist League

The first Communist organization of the international proletariat created in June 1847. Marx and Engels helped to work out the organizational principles of the League and wrote its programme – the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848.

The Communist League was the predecessor of the International Working Men's Association (The First International). The league existed until November 1852, its leaders deciding to disband it immediately after the Cologne Trials.

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization was the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels materialist socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

"In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganisation of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

Fredrick Engels
History of the Communist League

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League:

"The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeifschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

"I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

Friedrich Lessner

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels wrote, "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would become the Communist Manifesto.

Communist Party of Belorussia

Founded as component of Russian Communist Party December 30-31, 1918, with 17,800 members; led establishment of Belorussian Soviet republic January 1919; functioned as united organization with Lithuanian CP from February 1919 until 1920.

Communist Party of Estonia

Founded 1918 by Estonian section of RCP; led Estland Working People's Commune (Estonian Soviet republic) November 1918-January 1919; first congress November 1920 representing 700 members.

Communist Party of Finland

Founded in Moscow August 29, 1918, by members of Finnish Social Democratic Party left wing forced into exile by White Terror; helped found Comintern 1919.

Communist Party of German Austria

Founded November 3, 1918, in Vienna by Left Radical group that emerged from January 1918 strikes; 10,000 members in 1919. Never mounted a serious organizational or political challenge to the Socialist Party of Austria.

Communist Party of Germany (KPD)

Founded December 30, 1918, by Spartacus League with participation of International Communists of Ger-many; joined Comintern 1919; lost half its membership in 1919 split of ul-traleft forces that later formed the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD); 78,000 members at time of fusion with USPD left wing in 1920.

Communist Party of Hungary

Founded November 24, 1918, in Budapest by returned members of Hungarian Communist Group in Russia, left-wing currents in Social Democratic Party, and other forces; fused with Social Democratic Party of Hungary to form SP March 1919, which led Hungarian revolutionary government March-July 1919; SP disintegrated; CP reorganized 1925.

Communist Party of Latvia

Founded by Social Democracy of the Latvian Territory, which had affiliated to RSDLP in 1904 and was allied with Bolsheviks thereafter; led Latvian Soviet republic 1919; name changed to CP in March 1919; 7,500 members in 1919.

Communist Party of Lithuania

Founded August 1918 as component of RCP; held first conference October 1-3, 1918, representing 800 members; led Lithuanian Soviet republic December 1918-April 1919; functioned as united organization with Belorussian CP until 1920.

Communist Party of Switzerland

Revolutionary grouping that originated around Forderung newspaper; expelled from Swiss Social Democratic Party October-November 1918; known as the "old Communists"; claimed 1,200 members in Zurich 1919; fused with left wing of Social Democracy to form Swiss CP 1921.

Communist Party of the Netherlands

founded November 17, 1918; traced origin to formation in 1909 of Social Democratic Party (SDP) by ex-pelled left-wing members (Tribunists) of Social Democratic Workers Party; SDP adopted internationalist position during war and aligned with Zimmerwald Left; 1,000 members in late 1918; joined Comintem April 1919.

Communist Party of the Ukraine

Formed July 1918 as autonomous component of RCP with 4,000 members; grew out of RSDLP(B) of the Social Democracy of the Ukraine, which had led Ukrainian Soviet republic Jan-uary-February 1918.

Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD)

Founded 1920 by ultraleft wing of KPD expelled in October 1919.

Communist Workers' Party of Poland

The precurser of the Polish Communist Party formed in 1918 by leaders of the SDKPiL and PPS-Lewica. Decimated by Stalin's purges and persecuted by the Nazis, in Stalin ordered it merged in 1948 with the PPS to create the major party of the Polish People's Republic, the Polish United Workers' Party (PZRP).

Congress of Soviets

See: All-Russian Congress of Soviets

Constituent Assembly (Russian)

An Assembly whose delegates were chosen while the monarchy still ruled Russia, intended to determine a permanent constitution for Russia.

The Bolsheviks called for its convocation, pending the condition that it was in support of a government of Soviets. Lenin wrote in his April Theses (April 4, 1917):

"Without the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible."

When convened for the first time in January, 1918, the assembly refused to recognise the Soviet government and was disbanded.

Contact Commission

Set up in Russia by the Menshevik and SR parties. The commission was established (on March 8(21), 1917) as an official organ of communication between the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet with the Provisional Government. The commission intended to influence and lobby in the provisional government, predominately serving a reformist role, though without any power.

The members of the Contact Commission were Chkheidze, Steklov, Sukhanov, Fillipovsky and Skobelev (later joined by Chernov and Tsereteli). The Commission existed up to May 1917, when the Coalition Provisional Government was formed.

Council of People's Commissars (CPC)

The legislative body of the Soviet government, the Council of Peoples Commissars was formed by the Second Congress of Soviets; the first members elected to the council by the congress:

Chairman: V. I. Lenin
Commissar of Agriculture: V. P. Milyutin
Commissars of Army and Navy: V. A. Ovseyenko, N. V. Krylenko, P. V. Dybenko
Commissar of Commerce and Industry: V. P. Nogin
Commissar of Education: A. V. Lunacharsky
Commissar of Food: I. A. Teodorovich
Commissar of Foreign Affairs: L. D. Trotsky
Commissar of Interior: A. I. Rykov
Commissar of Justice: G. I. Oppokov
Commissar of Labour: A. G. Shlyapnikov
Commissar of Nationality Affairs: I. V. Stalin
Commissar of Post and Telegraphs: N. P. Avilov
Commissar of Railways: [vacant]
Commissar of Treasury: I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov

[...]

By the 1930s the CPC was no longer elected by the Congress of Soviets, but instead by the Politburo of the Communist party.