There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood . . .—SHAKESPEARE
REVOLUTION grows. An insurrection is planned and organised. The art of leading a Socialist insurrection consists in fusing the insurrection with a growing workers’ revolution and seizing power at the right moment. The “right moment” is that at which the most decisive forces of the revolution are supporting the party of insurrection and the enemy is weak and indecisive.
The March Revolution of 1917 was a revolution without an insurrection. The masses rose. Czardom collapsed. The Provisional Government of the Duma was the creation of the ruling classes in response to the revolutionary pressure of the workers, peasants, and soldiers forming the Soviets. It cannot be said the capitalists of Russia seized power. They received it as a legacy from Czardom. It simply fell into their hands, leaving them bewildered by the course of events. It is true they had been “creeping towards power,” and their influence was growing, but they had never planned to seize power. So unprepared were they, indeed, for its exercise that they little knew what to do with it when they had got it. They were obliged to act as the undertakers of Czardom, though even at so late a date they would have much preferred its resurrection in the form of a constitutional monarchy.
Meanwhile things were so wonderful! The happy days of the first release from a tyranny and the collapse of the old apparatus of government and administration infected everybody. Officers and men, employers and employees, publicly embraced, and all joined in singing the Marseillaise as if 1789 had repeated itself in all its glory. A sentimental ecstasy took the place of thought, and for a time it was as if the heart had become the thinking organ. The orators had great scope and the emotions full play.
Nevertheless, a revolution does not stand still. Legacies have their obligations and even mediocrities have to do something. It is a fact that when indecisive hands hold the reigns of government, especially in periods of revolution, all the different movements of opinion and interest have free scope and soon begin to resolve themselves into organisations for further struggle.
The period from March 17th, 1917, until November 7th, 1917, may be described rather as a prolonged revolutionary situation than a triumphant capitalist revolution. At no time in these eight months did the Provisional Government of the Duma show decisiveness or constructive purpose. It had not led the revolution, and had no desire to lead it. In fact it would have liked to carry on as if there had been no revolution. As the social forces swirled backwards and forwards and finally took definite shape around class interest, its leading figures stumbled blindly into office and out of it. They became decisive only when forced into defensive positions for their special interests or when pushed into action on behalf of their inherited obligations.
Of the 197 days of the Provisional Government—which changed both its form and personnel repeatedly—fifty-six were spent in governmental crises. At its birth the Grand Duke Michael shocked its members by refusing the succession, and Rodzianko the President of the Duma, who had bellowed to the crowds about “Mother Russia” and felt himself to be the legitimate Prime Minister of the new government, bowed resignedly when he was passed by and the Kadet Party gave the post to Prince Lvov. Within a few weeks Miliukov, the Foreign Minister, and Gutshkov, the War Minister, were forced to resign when the masses raised an outcry against their policy; and hardly had they passed to the rear than Lvov had to give way to Kerensky. The first Provisional Government had to give way to a second, the second to a third. Even Kerensky, though he retained his position as the various combinations succeeded each other, was never anything more than a cork bobbing on the crest of events until the revolutionary tidal wave of November 7th swept him away for ever.
When the Provisional Government behaved liberally it was because it had not the wit to be otherwise; and this was only at the beginning of the revolution, when it reflected the sense of freedom and the mood of the people at the collapse of the autocracy. The changing composition of the ministry then tells its own pathetic story. The first Provisional Government was composed of ten capitalist ministers and one Social Revolutionary (Kerensky). It was essentially a government of the Octobrists and the Kadets. Early in May, after the enforced resignation of Miliukov and Gutshkov, reconstruction led to more Social Revolutionaries being drawn in. Kerensky became the War Minister, Tchernov the Minister of Agriculture, Pereversev the Minister of Justice, Peschekhonov the Minister of Food, Skobolev—a Menshevik—Minister of Labour, and Tseretelli—another Menshevik—Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. The capitalists still held a majority; the ministry was a coalition of ten capitalists and six labour.
Now all kinds of congresses appeared on the scene—a Congress of Kadets, a Congress of Trade and Industry, a Congress of officers. The old State Duma showed signs of life, and even the old State Council of Czarist officials came together as the process of class grouping proceeded under the banner of the Coalition Government. The First Coalition Government was responsible for the renewal of military activities known as the July Offensive. That finished the First Coalition; the ten capitalist ministers resigned, leaving a government of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The more difficult the situation became for the capitalists the more dependent they became on the Labour Movement to “save the situation.”
This rump of the First Coalition was responsible for the great slander campaign against Lenin, whom it accused of being a “German spy,” and for the vigorous repression of the anti-war demonstrations in the capital. Having carried through this campaign, a third coalition government was formed in August (the rump of the First was reckoned as the Second). This had Kerensky at its head as President and Minister for War, a majority of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and a number of the Kadet Party. The Third Coalition was formed on condition that the Labour Ministers were independent of the Soviets.
Having thus detached itself from the latter, the Provisional Government proceeded to set itself against the Soviets with a view finally to destroying them. It was to secure a wider “democratic” basis for this latter purpose that the Provisional Government, with the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, called a State Conference of selected bodies. The representations consisted of an overwhelming majority of generals, capitalists, and their supporters, and the Conference proved a means for General Kornilov to gather his forces for an attempt to establish a military dictatorship which would end both the Kerensky régime and the Soviets. The Leningrad and Kronstadt Soviets, under the influence of the Bolsheviks, frustrated Kornilov’s plan. Thereupon, in place of a State Conference, the Provisional Government staged a “Democratic Conference,” but not before Kerensky had tried to set up his own directorate modelled on that of Kornilov, and for the same purpose. However, there was a great swing to the left throughout the country before he and his five “directors” could get fully into their stride, and the “all-in” Democratic Conference was the result. But ten leading spokesmen of the Coalition passed before the audience to little avail: the Movement outside the conference hall could not be stopped by platform speeches.
Lenin wrote at the time of this Democratic Conference:
During a revolution, millions and tens of millions learn in a week more than they do in a year of their ordinary somnolent life. For during a severe crisis in the life of the people it becomes particularly apparent what aims the various classes of people are pursuing, what forces they control, and what methods they resort to in action.
Against the elemental movement of millions of people the Provisional Government was helpless for three reasons which it did not comprehend and with which, had it comprehended them, it could not have dealt. With the collapse of Czardom had gone the collapse of its administration and the Provisional Government had not the means at its disposal to create a new administration in the midst of revolution. Out of what substance could it create a new police force, a new legal system, a new superstructure for society, when millions of workers, peasants, and soldiers were forming fresh organs of power with which they would decide who should order things to be done? The Government required social peace in which to create a new State apparatus, and social peace is not a feature of social revolution.
Still more fundamental was the fact that the revolution had its origin in the complete inability of the mixed capitalist and feudal economy of Czarist society to meet the economic demands of the war. The latter required from Russian economy the output of a great modern industrial society. The capitalists had proved, and were continuing to prove daily, that their method of organising production could not cope with the demands thrust upon it. The army was dissolving day by day because of the lack of equipment and food. The peasantry were hoarding food because they were not getting value for their goods. The workers in industry were ceasing to work because food was becoming increasingly difficult to get. There was thus a crisis in the process of production, and that crisis was beyond the power of the Provisional Government to control because it had no methods of production to introduce other than those of its predecessors. And week by week the economic situation moved on to catastrophe.
This alone was enough to ensure the Provisional Government’s powerlessness. But there was also the further embarrassment of its foreign policy, a legacy willingly inherited from Czardom, which committed it to a continuation of the war on account of the Secret Treaties and the pledges given to the Allied Powers. The attempt to stage an offensive in July, 1917, without regard for the economic crisis was calamitous. It aggravated social discontent in every direction, while the lack of supplies at the front increased the demoralisation and disaffection in the Army. Thus calamity was ever at the heels of the Provisional Government from the moment of its birth down to the last of the 197 futile days before the revolution swept it aside. Such a conclusion its members had neither planned for nor even foreseen.
Whatever the critics of Bolshevism may say, it has to be admitted that they not only saw the possibility of such a situation, but pursued a policy based on possibility becoming probability, and probability becoming certainty. They had put Marxism to the test of practice, and under Lenin’s leadership it had proved reliable. It is true there had been crises in the Bolshevik ranks, and that even in the early days of the Revolution there had been an extraordinary crisis in which all the leaders of the Party, with the exception of Lenin, had slipped up badly in their understanding of the situation. Lenin had crashed in upon his colleagues at the beginning of April and again put the Party of his creation on the right path.
By speech and by pen he had, within two weeks, won over the Bolsheviks of Petrograd and Moscow and the majority of the Central Committee to his point of view. On May 7th to 12th, was held the all-Russian Congress of the Bolshevik Party. There were 151 delegates present, representing 80,000 members of the organisation throughout the country. Lenin led the fight for his “April Theses.” Kamenev and Rykov led the opposition. Lenin won, and the “April Theses” became the guiding policy of the Party—the Party Line.
It was in these days of re-assimilation of the Bolshevik forces that a new period of Stalin’s life began. This Congress witnessed the intimate relations of the two men thoroughly re-established. That Stalin, on his return from Siberia, had not fully appreciated the nature of the new developments of the revolution and had failed to see them as Lenin saw them, was not held against him. He was re-elected to the Central Committee of the Party, and also to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, here created for the first time; and he has remained a member of this most powerful body from that day to this. In its hands is vested the political direction and authority of the Party in respect of all its activities between Central Committee meetings. The Central Committee was in charge of three secretaries; Stalin was one of them, and at the same time one of the editors of the Party newspaper, Pravda.
I think it is true to say that even at thus stage in the history of the Bolshevik Party, no other member had so much executive and administrative responsibility. Lenin of course was the acknowledged political leader and functioned as chairman. Stalin was his chief of staff by virtue of the positions just enumerated; and as the insurrection drew near he will be seen in the leading staff organisations which prepared it.
There were two other men in this central group of the Party who also possessed remarkable executive ability, Sverdlov and Dzerzhinsky. With Stalin and Lenin these men formed a remarkable combination and steered the Revolution through its most difficult years. Lenin, first of the four, the “genius of revolution” at the height of his powers, was forty-seven years of age, physically sturdy, burning with energy, a superb leader of men. Sverdlov, not yet forty, was lanky, black-haired, spectacled, powerful-voiced, a superb organiser who had made his name as a leading Bolshevik far away in the towns at the foot of the Urals. A foundation member of the Party, one of its first executive members, he had been banished to the same place as Stalin in 1913. Felix Dzerzhinsky was a Pole who had formed the Social Democratic Party of Poland, and under Lenin’s influence became a Bolshevik. He was tall, well-built, with a head and face, when I met him in his later years, like the classic paintings of the Man of Nazareth. He was an intellectual, born of a Polish landlord family in Lithuania. Prison had been his main university. At the time of the Revolution he was forty-five. He was to become the first organiser of the “Red Terror”—not a job he liked but it was one he fulfilled with that integrity and efficiency which marked everything he did. He was a man of great faith and conviction as well as ability, and had he had a choice of work after the revolution had triumphed he would have become the Minister or Commissar of Education. And in this he would have shone brilliantly.
Stalin at this time of preparation for the “grand assault” was thirty-eight, fit and ready for the struggle. Always cool and shrewd, sound in his judgement of men, he knew how to organise them and give them responsibility. He and his fellow-leaders were tireless in their labours and completely absorbed by them. Some people write history as if the leadership of revolution consisted only of making speeches and writing articles. But somebody has to organise the meetings, organise the speakers, arrange for them to go here and go there, establish team-work in every department, build up the party of revolution, educate its members, spread them into the factories and workshops, the Soviets, the Army, the Navy, the transport services and the countless departments where the masses employed are going to play a decisive part in the great transformation. This work was not confined to Petrograd and Moscow. The 80,000 Bolsheviks were spread over a great area of Russia, and in the course of eight months were to increase to 300,000 who in turn. were to lead millions.
These figures alone indicate the magnitude of the task undertaken. For the enrolment was not a mere recording of names of those who adhered to the Bolshevik programme. They had to be organised for work. They were the material of the collective leadership. The three secretaries of the Central Committee held in their hands the threads of every activity of the Party from headquarters to the remotest group of Bolsheviks to be found in Russia. They were in action day and night, sleeping only when forced to break off from sheer exhaustion.
For most of the time that Stalin was in Petrograd he made his home with the Alleluievs, his old-time friends from Georgia. This meant he had somewhere to sleep when he could. But his days and nights were spent in committee meetings and journeys, editorial meetings, arranging for the publication of pamphlets, periodicals, and the writing of articles, meeting district organisers, committees, groups, attending conferences, arranging central committee meetings and political bureau meetings, preparing demonstrations, attending factory meetings and Soviet meetings, and, not least, organising the arming of the workers. No one who has not been at close quarters and witnessed the fullness of the activities of leading Bolsheviks can imagine the intensity of their work and the completeness of their absorption in it.
The Congress which elected Stalin to the Central Committee and made clear the new policy of the Party was the first and last legal conference of the Bolshevik Party held in Russia prior to the November Revolution. Even while it was assembling, another critical stage in the evolution of revolution was reached. The great May Day Demonstrations of Petrograd were made the occasion for Miliukov and Gutshkov to announce the adherence of the Provisional Government to the war aims of the Czar. This ended the happy era of liberty and fraternity of the classes. The days immediately following saw demonstrations of a new kind. Soldiers and workers poured into the streets to denounce the war policy of the Government. Their hopes of peace negotiations were shattered, and they were angry. They marched from the barracks and factories to the Tauridier Palace to protest. The middle classes, officers, and gentry marched down Nevsky Prospect under the leadership of the Kadet Party supporting the Government. Lenin could not have provided evidence more apt than that given by the Government and the demonstrations.
The Soviets, as yet composed largely of Social Revolutionaries and Menshevik delegates, forced the resignation of Miliukov and Gutshkov, not because they were pro-war and the Mensheviks and their allies against the war—for these also were pro-war—but because they objected to the open imperialist character of the speeches. With the removal of Gutshkov, Kerensky became Minister for War. At once he began the fateful preparations for the July Offensive without regard for the conditions in the rear, the food situation and the capacity of Russian industry to provide the Army with fighting equipment. His policy was that of his predecessors. Again great protest meetings and demonstrations were held in the capital, and the cry grew loud and strong—“Down with the ten capitalist ministers! All Power to the Soviets of Workers and Soldiers and Peasant deputies! Bread! Peace! Freedom!”
Here was clear evidence, as the thousands, carrying hundreds of banners bearing these slogans, marched to the Tauridier Palace, that the Bolsheviks were giving coherence and conscious purpose to the feelings of the masses. Nevertheless, on July 1st the offensive was opened. Disaster at once followed, and again there were mass demonstrations and revolt. This time the ten capitalist ministers resigned and on July 15th left the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with full responsibility for the repression of the armed demonstrations of soldiers and workers. Clever manœuvring! Perhaps a little too clever.
The occasion put the Bolshevik leadership to the test as never before. The soldiers and the workers of Petrograd especially were angry and militant. The Kadets and the officers, still possessing considerable military strength, were waiting for the Government to repress the demonstrators. They were waiting also for the Bolsheviks to give the call for insurrection. The Government was still tied to the Executive of the Soviets, and the parties of the Government still held a majority in the Soviets. Had the Bolsheviks made this the moment to seize power they would have led the masses into war against the Soviets as well as against the Provisional Government; and such an action was exactly the hope of the Kadets and officers. They were waiting for the workers and soldiers to have a civil war of their own, and at the right moment they would step in with a “whiff of grape shot” to restore order under a military dictatorship. Thus the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were to begin the counter-revolution, and the militarists and Kadets complete it.
Soldiers, sailors and workers, half a million strong and bearing arms, poured into the streets of Petrograd. Stalin relates how on July 16th,
there was a city conference of Bolsheviks discussing municipal questions. It was interrupted by a soldier from a machine-gun regiment informing them that workers and soldiers had decided to rise and were sending out delegates to the regiments and factories. At four o’clock the Central Committee under Lenin’s chairmanship met to decide the course of the Bolsheviks. It decided against action. I was commissioned to carry the decision to the session of the Executive Committee of the Soviets. I conveyed all the facts, I proposed that they take the necessary measures. At five o’clock the city conference adopted a similar resolution. All participants went to their districts and factories to restrain the masses from rising. At seven o’clock two regiments appeared outside the Party’s headquarters carrying banners reading “All Power to the Soviets.” Two of our comrades came out to persuade the soldiers to return to the barracks. They were met with cries of “Down!” This had never happened before. At this time a procession of workers came up with the cry “All Power to the Soviets.”
Here was a critical situation indeed. The masses felt themselves ready, and were appealing to the Party which had prepared them, to lead them to the assault. What a test for leadership! Lenin and his colleagues knew that if they did not come out at the head of the demonstrations and lead the attack they would lose the confidence of the masses, at least for a time; and that time would be valuable, for in the hour of their weakness they would be liable to incur the full weight of the Government’s repressive measures. Yet they knew they had not yet a majority in the Soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, and that the peasants were still under the influence of the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.
It was Stalin who negotiated with the Soviet Executive and made it clear that “we are not rising against the Soviets.” It was he who was sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress to persuade the rebel soldiers to vacate their positions. Thus the Bolsheviks succeeded in transforming a widespread and spontaneous uprising into peaceful demonstrations. Yet in spite of their efforts there was some street fighting. The Government declared martial law, and felt its turn had arrived. By the 19th of July it was on the offensive against the Bolsheviks and the workers and soldiers who had demonstrated. The Bolsheviks were held responsible for all that had happened and accused of an attempted insurrection. Now began the great “German spy” campaign against Lenin already alluded to. The Party headquarters were sacked. The offices of Pravda were raided and the paper closed down. The printing-press was smashed. Leaders were arrested wholesale and Petrograd ransacked to find Lenin.
On the evening of July 22nd, four men could have been seen walking along the crowded boulevard of Petrograd towards the railway station from which the trains leave for Finland. They were Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin and Alleluiev. The two latter were guarding the two former as they manœuvred them on to a train that was to take them to a pre-arranged hiding-place in the forests in the environs of Petrograd; for the Central Committee of the Party had decreed that on no account must Lenin or Zinoviev be allowed to fall into the hands of the Government forces. The mad campaign alleging them to be pro-German was so fierce that had they been caught they would have been lynched long before they could have been brought to prison. The Volynsky Regiment, which had been the first to participate in the revolutionary uprisings of March, was so inflamed that it pledged itself to effect their arrest.
Thus once again the full responsibility for leading the Bolshevik Party fell upon the shoulders of Stalin, aided by Sverdlov and Dzerzhinsky. The Party headquarters were in ruins. New ones had to be found. A new paper and a new press had to be discovered. The wave of reaction had to be beaten back and the Party strengthened . . . New headquarters were found, a new printing-press was secured. Pravda reappeared under another name.
During this time Trotsky, with his small group of supporters known as Mezrayontsi, had not yet joined up with the Bolsheviks. Arriving in Petrograd after the “April Crisis” of the Party and the firm establishment of the new policy, the group declared itself in agreement with Lenin. In the meetings of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky had supported the Bolsheviks most powerfully. But when the Provisional Government attacked the Bolsheviks they let Trotsky alone. Again he declared himself a supporter of Lenin’s policy, and asked to be arrested, which he was, and imprisoned. This had its publicity value for him and increased his popularity among the masses, but it cannot be said that it gave leadership to those masses or helped in any way to carry out the stupendous task of reassembling the Bolshevik forces and developing their organisation under the Provisional Government’s repressive blows. Certainly, Trotsky was to play an important rôle in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and to be a power in carrying through what every member believed to be its great historic task; but not yet. These were still the days when Stalin was the unquestioned deputy of Lenin. Now his unrivalled experience as a party builder in conditions of illegality was given full scope. The fact that he was no orator holding the platform in the spotlight of publicity was an asset, for it led his enemies to underestimate his power and gave him greater freedom of movement.
If there is any doubt about either the confidence of Lenin in his deputy or the latter’s standing in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, his rôle in the all-Russian Party Conference, held within a month of the Government attack and the many arrests, should remove that doubt. The Conference was held under conditions of illegality. The three secretaries of the Central Committee prepared it, and Stalin was the principal reporter of the main questions before it.
Before the smashing attack of the Government began, the Party had grown to 240,000. It had forty-one publications, twenty-nine in Russian and twelve in other languages. Although the frenzied campaign against it was still at its height when the Conference was in session (July 26th to August 3rd), 157 delegates attended. That it had to meet secretly signifies the tenseness of the relations between the classes. Superficially it appeared the ruling forces of the old régime were about to effectively re-establish themselves. At no time since March 17th had they felt so confident. The Provisional Government had been detatched from the influence of the Soviets; through it now the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were repressing the Bolsheviks and devitalising the Soviets; the military leaders under Kornilov, the General in charge of the military forces of Petrograd, were preparing for an open military dictatorship. Nevertheless the Conference of Bolsheviks had not met to wind up their affairs but to continue their progress along the road to power; and in fact, less than fourteen weeks were to elapse from the final session of this Conference before the Bolshevik Party swept the Provisional Government aside and established the Republic of Soviets.
Stalin, as head of the conference, was able to say that by July 10th the Party had been able to issue a new paper, Worker and Soldier, in place of Pravda. The Bolsheviks did not regard the actions of the Provisional Government as evidence of strength and confidence in the situation. On the contrary, Stalin summed up the situation before the Party and the workers of Russia in these words: “Only one thing remains, namely, to take power by force, by overthrowing the Provisional Government. And only the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasants can take power by force.”
Such a conclusion was based on the knowledge that not one of the basic problems confronting the Revolution had been dealt with by the Government. The food situation was worsening daily. The Army and Navy were being called on to do the impossible. And the masses were turning to the Bolsheviks for leadership.
Next: IX. The Conquest of Power