Beat on the street the march of rebellion,
Sweeping over the heads of the proud;
We, the flood of the second deluge,
Shall wash the world like a bursting cloud.—V. MAYAKOVSKY
AT the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, held during the July-August days of repression, two incidents occurred which were later to prove of great moment in Stalin’s life. They were not so regarded at the time; events had yet to confirm their great personal significance, although their political importance was recognised, in part, immediately. It was here on Stalin’s proposal, obviously with the approval of Lenin, that Leon Trotsky and the Mezrayontsi were admitted to the Party. The group consisted of former Bolsheviks and Mensheviks who, since 1913, had vacillated between the two divisions, criticising both and sometimes supporting one, sometimes the other, and occasionally neither. The group now declared it accepted the programme and policy of the Bolsheviks without reservation, and asked to be admitted.
It would appear at first that Trotsky here brought to an end his fifteen years’ quarrel with the Bolsheviks, by admitting that they were right and he wrong. Such a conclusion, however, over-simplifies the meaning of the event. Trotsky was a man of great ability, a first-class orator and journalist. He was of the same age as Stalin and of about the same height and figure, but of an entirely different personality. Trotsky’s sharp features and inevitable pince-nez, his quick nervous movements, sharp tongue and quick wit, reflected the superb egotist who saw history as a drama staged to show him as producer, manager, and leading actor. He would eventually write history, based on the theme “I and the Russian Revolution.” He had a great capacity for generalisation but lacked the balance imparted by the scientific method and therefore often generalised too soon and short-circuited history with grand phrases, for he was a lover of words and their sounds. When he joined the Bolshevik Party he did not regard it as a collective body which would have any power over him. On the contrary, he regarded his joining as a means of acquiring power over the Party and becoming second-in-command to Lenin. He himself wrote of the action in words which are very self-revealing: “Trotsky came to Lenin as to a teacher whose power and significance he understood later than many others, but perhaps more fully than they.” A less conceited person would have left the latter observation to others. The egotist could not wait.
Stalin, however, knew how to wait. His capacity for waiting has often annoyed friend and foe. Histrionics were not among his qualities. He moved or appeared to move more slowly than Trotsky, perhaps because he was not interested in firework displays or mental gymnastics. He had, and has, a remarkable memory, and analysis is his favourite method of exposition. Above all he is a collective worker i.e. one who works with a group or team, probably more so than Lenin, a superb organiser of men and work. He was by no means a “yes-man” of Lenin, but a convinced disciple, striving always to make Lenin’s principles his own. He lacked the refinements of those who, while he organised the submerged proletariat of the Caucasus and was laying the fuses of the Revolution in hard and difficult places, had rubbed shoulders with Western intellectuals. The older he got the more he gave the impression of possessing great reserves of strength and sureness of grip.
When he proposed that Trotsky and his colleagues be admitted to the Party he was little concerned about the personal relations between Trotsky and himself. These had hardly yet begun, although there had been a few political skirmishes between them in the press. The admission of the newcomers to Bolshevism he regarded as a necessary measurer and he proposed it without any doubt that the Party could assimilate them and handle any dissidents, however big or important they might be.
The second incident was to have its echoes throughout the later years; Preobrazhensky, later an ardent devotee of Trotsky, moved to amend the resolution on the conquest of power, which Stalin had proposed to the Congress. This amendment asked the delegate to declare that the country could be directed towards Socialism only in the event of a proletarian revolution in the West. Trotsky was not present or he would then have shown how superficial and temporary was his unity with the Bolsheviks.
Here was the issue which was to form the great divide in the Bolshevik ranks. Could Russia advance to Socialism without a revolution in the West? Lenin had already answered the question in unequivocal terms in his writings, but it was not then an issue affecting the immediate policy of the Party. It was soon to become a fundamental question affecting the whole course of the Revolution, the future of the Soviet Government and the as yet unborn Communist International, but as it was not yet urgent the debate was a little academic. Stalin answered Preobrazhensky with these words:
The possibility is not excluded that Russia will be the country that will lay the road to Socialism. . . . We must discard the antiquated idea that only Europe can show us the way. There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter.
There was not a big debate on the question. Stalin’s resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority, and there were no immediate echoes. The lightning had flashed, but the thunder only came a long while afterwards. At the same time it is true to say that had Stalin’s statement been broadcast to the world, the whole Socialist and Labour movement would have laughed it out of court. All the “Marxist” schools of Western Socialism, as well as the other schools of Socialist thought, held the view that Socialism must come first in the most highly developed capitalist countries; and the majority of them held the view that it would come through parliamentary democracy. The Bolshevik Party was comparatively unknown to the Western Socialists. A few German and Austrian Socialists were acquainted with the Russians, but even if all the parties of the West had known of the Bolshevik Party and its doctrines, the Marxists would have rejected them as non-Marxist and the rest would have rejected them because they were revolutionary. And all would have accused Lenin and Stalin of being Utopian visionaries for thinking it possible for Russia to lead the world in Socialism.
Although the Bolsheviks were the product of international Marxism their evolution had been practically ignored, and their inner struggles dismissed as examples of the Russian intellectual’s flare for doctrinaire disputation. The fact is that the Bolsheviks had seized upon the revolutionary content of Marxism which international Socialism had shed, and step by step had given it a specifically Russian application. This was of course perfectly natural. When Stalin made his statement concerning Socialism in one country it never entered his head that this was a denial of the international significance and character of the Russian Revolution. Nor was he accused of such a denial. It was only later, when Trotsky took his stand on the principle that at least a European Revolution must precede the possibility of Socialism in Russia that Stalin’s statement was turned into a denial of world revolution. Actually the two theories had flashed across the Congress without its full recognition of their implication. In fact neither theory has ever been fully developed. Certainly it is true to say that up to this time the theory of international revolution had hardly got beyond the stage of a few sweeping generalisations and assumptions, while the idea of Socialism first coming to fruition in a backward country had just been born. Preobrazhinsky’s proposal was really a derivative from Western Marxism, which had sloganised certain principles and generalised a process without sufficient examination of the data. Marx had concluded the “Communist Manifesto” with the stirring call “Workers of all Lands, Unite!” Unite for what? Obviously an international revolution. “Capitalism is international! The workers have no country!” The exploited of all lands must answer the international combinations of the capitalists with the Socialist International! From such general principles and slogans, and not from any careful analysis of the world of capitalism, came the idea of an international simultaneous revolution. In the minds of the Russians who seized upon this idea was also the Menshevik theory that the proletariat of Russia could not lead the Russian Revolution to Socialism because of the country’s technical backwardness. Therefore, argued the Mensheviks who had become Bolsheviks, the working-class of Russia must be reinforced by the technically advanced industrial proletariat of Europe before it can advance to Socialism. And so it appeared on the face of things that the original Bolsheviks were less revolutionary than the converted Mensheviks.
Stalin, however, had derived his idea from Lenin, who was the first Marxist to formulate what is known as the “law of unequal development of capitalism.” He had written in 1916:
The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in various countries. It cannot be otherwise under the commodity production system. From this it follows irrefutably that Socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while others will remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois for some time . . . [1]
Stalin was thus reiterating the teaching of Lenin and by no means expounding a new notion of his own. But there were no immediate repercussions from the incident. Nor did he proceed to set before the Congress the task of building Socialism immediately after they had conquered power. On the contrary, he followed the course which Lenin had so emphatically advocated in his fight for his “April Theses.” The immediate task before the Revolution after the conquest of power would be to secure peace, nationalise the banks, establish workers’ control over production and distribution, and give the land to the peasants. Standing before the 285 delegates, Stalin quietly but firmly brought them to the main task with these words—“Only one thing remains, namely, to take power by force. . . .” He carried the Congress with him.
Outside the hall events were moving swiftly towards that decisive moment when his declaration would be fulfilled. On August 1st, 1917, General Kornilov was made Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of Russia and on the very day that the Bolshevik Congress finished its proceedings he demanded the introduction of the death penalty in the rear as well as at the front. Kornilov was a Cossack—“a simple Cossack,” some writers describe him. Sir Bernard Pares says of him that he had the vaguest understanding of politics and allowed himself to be directed in them by Zavayko, a financier with the ambition to become Minister of Finance. Kornilov’s simple understanding of the situation was, however, sufficient for him to plot a military dictatorship with himself as military dictator.
When on August 12th Kerensky convoked a Council of State in Moscow, it consisted almost wholly of representatives of the landlords, capitalists, generals, officers, and Cossacks. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries were there in a minority representing the Soviets. Stalin and his colleagues thereupon set the Bolshevik Party into action and led strikes of protest in the streets of Moscow and other cities. Kerensky boasted to the Council of State that he would suppress the revolutionary movement “by iron and blood.” Kornilov went a step farther, and bluntly demanded that “the committees and Soviets be abolished.” Supported financially by bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, he quickly set his troops in motion on the plea that the Bolsheviks were planning an uprising in the capital for August 27th. Kerensky increased his terror against the Bolsheviks, and then suddenly took alarm at the movement of the masses towards them. Fearful lest they would sweep away both Kornilov and the Provisional Government, he made an abrupt change of front and turned against the General.
On August 25th Kornilov moved the Third Mounted Corps under General Krymos against Petrograd. The action ended the doubts and fears of the masses with regard to the Bolsheviks. Lenin, of course, in constant communication with Stalin, directed matters from his hiding-place, but it was Stalin who implemented Lenin’s policy with practical decisions on the spot, guiding the Party press and leading the Bolshevik forces into action. The moment Kornilov began to move his troops the Bolsheviks struck. The Central Committee of the Party called the workers and soldiers to armed resistance. Red Guard detachments of armed workers from the factories grew rapidly. The trade unions were mobilised. Armed sailors by the thousand arrived from Kronstadt. Delegates went out to meet the “Savage Division” with the force of an idea. Then as soon as the Cossack troops realised they were being used to destroy the Soviets, they refused to advance. Agitators were sent to other Kornilov units, while the mobilising of soldiers and workers for the armed defence of Petrograd went on apace.
Kerensky having so changed his tune that he was now appealing to the Bolsheviks for aid against Kornilov, had released Bolshevik prisoners, among whom was Trotsky. The Kornilov revolt collapsed; and that began the great change in the composition of the Soviets. During July, when the Provisional Government of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had been conducting its campaign of slander and repression against the Bolsheviks, the Soviets sank to such a low level of ineffectiveness that the Bolsheviks had to suspend their slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” and appeal directly to the masses in the factories and Army units. Now the tide had turned. At once new energy poured into the Soviets. Factories and military units held new elections, turned out the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, and elected Bolsheviks. The day following the Kornilov defeat the Petrograd Soviet supported the Bolsheviks. Moscow followed. Other cities and towns fell into line.
During September and October the masses everywhere got into their stride. The peasants in great numbers seized the landed estates, ploughed up the fields of the landlords, pushed the landlords aside, and divided up the land among themselves. Neither punitive expeditions nor coaxing could stop them. The Provisional Government wired to the Provincial officials—“Seizures of property are damaging the cause of the Revolution—put a stop to it and bring about order.” Shingarov, a Government Minister, wired—“A solution of the land question without legal enactment by the Government as a whole cannot be permitted.” How familiar the tune! It must be that all governments from the day of the first labour dispute recorded the formula and passed it on from generation to generation for appropriate use. Bureaucrats everywhere and at all times have seemed incapable of learning that the sea of human unrest can never be swept back by the broom of a legal formula. From the county of Kursk came the report of the Commissar: “In the village of Ipsyagach, in the Spass District, anarchy reigns supreme. The peasants are storming the gardens and looting. Resistance was offered the Commissar and fifty soldiers. The owners, who have fled, ask for protection.” From the Province of Tambovsk came the account of the destruction of the property of Prince Vnazensky: “Two thousand peasants stormed the grounds and arrested the Prince. He was guarded by three militiamen chosen by the crowd, who took him to Gryaze, where he was brutally murdered by the soldiers. The crowd then destroyed the adjacent grounds of Velyamenatch. The local garrison is unreliable. The dragoons sent from Tambovsk are insufficient. Unrest is growing.”[2] The fighting grew in bitterness. By September, thirty-five out of seventy-five districts in the Central Province were in the throes of violent movements.
In the towns conditions were moving from bad to worse. The budget deficit in 1916, the last year before the fall of the Czar, was 76 per cent of the total expenditure. In 1917 it grew to 82 per cent. Inflation covered the deficit with inevitable consequences. Production declined. In 1916 Russia produced 616 locomotives for ordinary use and 215 for special war purposes. In 1917 the figures were 410 and 69 respectively. The production of industry in fifty-eight provinces of European Russia in 1916 rose to 121.5 per cent, above production in 1913, but during 1917 fell to 77.3 per cent of 1913. Wages in industry fell from 24.7 roubles a month in 1916 to 21.2 roubles in 1917. In 1916 there was a monthly issue of 288.1 million paper roubles. During the eight months of the Provisional Government the monthly issue rose to 1,175,000,000 roubles. Prices soared to fantastic levels. In Moscow the price index of the Finance Commissariat showed prices in 1917 to be 870 per cent above those of 1913. And the Army was melting away. General Dukhonin reported to Kerensky in August 1917 that it had lost 2,000,000 dead, 5,000,000 wounded, 2,000,000 prisoners and 2,000,000 deserters.
The grimness deepened. Petrograd, the seat of Government, is at the best of times not the most cheerful of cities when September and October creep upon it. The skies are dull. Heavy grey clouds hang overhead and rain falls drenchingly. The days shorten. Darkness settles over all at three in the afternoon and remains until ten the next morning. As the weeks pass the rain turns to sleet until the frosts finally bind the thick blankets of snow upon the land throughout the long winter months. But now there were added troubles. Food was scarce. There was milk for only one-half of the city’s babies, and adults saw next to none. The allowance of bread fell week by week down to one quarter of a pound per head per day. There was inevitable and unending queueing for basic necessities. Cold winds swept up the Neva from the Gulf of Finland. The terror of hunger pushed its way into apartment houses and flats, and armed guards had to be appointed by the inhabitants to protect the people from hungry house-breakers.
While the Provisional Government passed its days and nights in successive crises and the working people queued and splashed through the drenching autumn rains of Petrograd’s darkening days, the parasitic elements of society carried on as usual, though perhaps a little more hectically. Ladies drank their tea and the gentlemen proved their stamina with vodka. The theatres were crowded. The glorious voice of Chaliapin held admiring crowds. The feminine intelligentsia listened to lectures on theosophy, astrology, and similar topics. And Moscow “Society” rivalled that of Petrograd.
But everywhere, in cities and towns, there were ceaseless meetings, demonstrations, protests, conferences of co-operatives, Soviets, priests, officers, gatherings of factory committees, assemblies of soldiers in the trenches and barracks. Smolny Institute, a one-time school for the daughters of ladies, had been taken over by the Petrograd Soviet and was now also the headquarters of the Bolsheviks. From Smolny every day poured loads of political literature of all kinds.
In the midst of this massive process of disintegration and ferment the Provisional Government was apprehensive, and Kerensky wondered what he could do to discredit the Bolsheviks in the eyes of the masses. It was clear to everyone that the Petrograd garrison had “gone Bolshevik.” He therefore thought out a scheme to remove it and replace it with “reliable” troops. He instructed the General Staff to send it to defend Reval, and to bring “uncontaminated” forces into Petrograd to “restore order.” It was unfortunate for the scheme that Dybenko, the representative of the Kronstadt sailors, was present at the Petrograd Soviet when the question of the defence of Reval was raised. Dybenko told the Soviet that the Kronstadt sailors would take care of Reval. “We will guarantee to defend Reval if you will stay in Petrograd and defend the Revolution.” That finished the Kerensky scheme for the removal of the garrison.
It was at this time also that Stalin went to see Lenin in Finland, where they worked out plans for the final stages of the insurrection. Immediately on his return the Party Central Committee appointed a Military Revolutionary Committee consisting of Stalin, Sverdlov, Bubnov, Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky. This military committee had to prepare the insurrection not only in Petrograd but in Moscow and other large centres.
The formation of the Red Guards in the factories for the defence of Petrograd against Kornilov provided the Military Committee with increasing numbers of men ready to fight. No sooner had the change in the political complexion of the Soviets become apparent than the preparation for the transfer of power to them became the order of the day again. But there was a shortage of arms. Stalin did not repeat the tactics of the St. Petersburg Soviet of 1905 and call upon the Government to form a militia under the local authorities. Instead he called a conference of the Bolshevik delegates of the Putilov Arms factory in Petrograd and gave them on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet a written requisition for 5,000 rifles. A deputation of 500 militant workmen presented the order to the management, and received immediate delivery. In 1905 Stalin had said, “There are three things we need: the first is arms, the second is arms, and the third is still more arms.” In 1917 he got them. Nothing was to be left to chance. He wrote in Pravda appealing to the soldier deserters to join the Red Guards.
The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, deeply concerned with this progress of the Bolsheviks and their own waning influence, convened an All-Russian Democratic Conference. They still held firmly to the view that power should not pass to the Soviets but to a Constituent Assembly and a bourgeois Parliamentary Republic. The conference consisted of representatives of the Socialist Parties (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries), the Soviets in which these parties had a majority, the Zemstvos, trades unions, and commercial, industrial, and military circles. It was this conference that set up the Provisional Council of the Republic which became known as the Pre-Parliament—an obvious attempt to stem the course of the Revolution at an hour when questions of constitutions and forms of government meant little, unless at the same time they gave immediate answers to the demand for “Peace and Bread.”
The Bolshevik Central Committee decided to boycott the Pre-Parliament, although a faction of Bolsheviks appeared at the conference and on the fourth day was withdrawn. For the majority of Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, Stalin, and also, now, Trotsky, it was by this time all or nothing. They must either seize power or perish. Behind the smoke screen of the Pre-Parliament a second Kornilov affair was in preparation. There could be no further delay without disaster in forcing the preparations for the insurrection. The Bolsheviks were in a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and through them they convened the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets for the second half of October.
But not all the Bolshevik leaders were in favour of the course the Party was taking. On October 7th Lenin returned from Finland. On October 10th the Central Committee met to make its historic decision:
Considering therefore that an armed uprising is inevitable and that the time for it is fully ripe, the Central Committee instructs all the Party organisations to be guided accordingly, and to discuss and decide all practical questions . . . from this point of view.
Two members, Kamenev and Zinoviev, voted against the resolution outright, denouncing it as adventurism. And then came the first dispute between Stalin and Trotsky—not a big affair, but a forerunner of much to follow. Trotsky moved an amendment proposing that the uprising should not be started before the Second Congress of Soviets met. Stalin was opposed to any delay. He was the representative of the Political Bureau on the Party’s Military Revolutionary Committee, and all other committees worked under its direction. The Petrograd Soviet set up a Military Committee with Trotsky as chairman, but it was composed entirely of Bolsheviks answerable to the Political Bureau through Stalin. The defection of Kamenev and Zinoviev and the publication of their denunciation of the proposed uprising in a non-party paper gave full publicity to the preparations already afoot and much which should have been kept secret. Lenin angrily denounced them as “traitors” and “strike-breakers,” and demanded their expulsion from the Party. The Central Committee denounced them, but refrained from the drastic course of expulsion. It disciplined them into the Revolution.
But the publicity made any delay all the more dangerous. The Provisional Government called a meeting to decide extraordinary measures against the Bolsheviks. On November 1st it summoned troops from the front to Petrograd, intending them to occupy the Smolny Institute, the headquarters of the Bolsheviks, on the eve of the Second Congress of the Soviets. It was too late. Stalin, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky and Uritsky were at their posts. The time for disputation was gone. On the morning of November 6th, Kerensky ordered the suppression of the Bolshevik press and dispatched armoured cars to the premises. But Stalin had mobilised Red Guards, who drove off Kerensky’s forces and stood ward over the press. At 11 a.m. the Party’s paper Rabochy Put (“The Workers’ Path”) came out with a call for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. The insurrection had begun. Red Guards from the factories, Revolutionary soldiers from the Petrograd Garrison, and the Kronstadt sailors, moved into their pre-arranged positions and on to the attack. Railway stations, Post Office, Telegraph Office, the Ministries, the State Bank, were occupied. The cruiser Aurora moved up the Neva and trained its guns on the Winter Palace. Lenin moved to Smolny Institute and with Stalin took charge of the uprising.
At 2.35 p.m. on the afternoon of November 7th, Trotsky, Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and its Military Revolutionary Committee, announced to the assembled deputies:
I declare in the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee that the Provisional Government has ceased to exist. Some Ministers are arrested. The rest will be arrested in the next few days or hours. The revolutionary garrison, which is under the command of Military Revolutionary Committee, has dissolved the meeting of the Pre-Parliament. It has been said that the rising of the garrison would at least lead to pogroms and that the revolution would be drowned in blood. To the best of our knowledge there has not been a single victim. There is no other example of a revolution known to me in history in which such great masses took part and which was so bloodless. The power of the Provisional Government, with Kerensky at its head was dead and was only waiting for the broom of history to sweep it away . . .
Trotsky was followed by Lenin; and while they were addressing the Petrograd Soviet, Stalin was directing the revolutionary armed contingents to all the decisive points of the city. He was not in the limelight, but in his hands were the reins which guided forces in accordance with the collective will. At 3.15 p.m. soldiers of the Pavlov Regiment held up the traffic on Nevsky Prospect. At 3.45 p.m. troops of the Military Revolutionary Committee occupied Kazan Square. At 6 p.m. the Winter Palace was invested. At 10.45 the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened in Smolny Institute. At the call of the Presidium of the Congress Lenin stepped on to the platform, facing the assembled deputies. When the seemingly never-ending ovation which greeted him had at last subsided he began to speak—“We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order. . . .”
Thus the first Soviet Socialist Government stepped on to the stage of history. And while its declarations on this day echoed round the world the harassed Kerensky dived into an American motor-car and fled.
1. War programme of the Revolution, Collected Works, Vol. XIX, p. 325, Russ. ed.
2. Report of District Commissar, August 25th.
Next: X. First Things First