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THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

The Triumph of the Soviets

LEON T R 0' f'-S R Y

THE HISTORY

OF THE

RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

VOLUME THREE

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

TRANSLATED FftOH THE HUSSIAN BY

MAX

SIMON AND SCHUSTEB

MCMXXXII NEW YORK

R3TG3HCTS RBSB*tVBl>

, BY SlMOM A ISTtt Sc*iUSTl*R
FOURTJhK AViiJNTUH Nli'W YORK.
tJ* S* A. BY VAII^-BAl^JLOU X*KXL*SS

BINOI-XAMTONf, NN Y*
3BY *-! WOLX**** HSTA.TB* KTB^W YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER 3

II, THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES 36

III, WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PRE-PARLIAMENT AND

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS , ... 62

IV. THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE , .88
V. LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION 124

VI. THE ART OF INSURRECTION , . . . ,. . , 167

VIL THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL 200

VIIL THE CAPTURE OF THE WINTER PALACE .... 240

IX. THE OCTOBER INSURRECTION 276

X. THE CONGRESS OF THE SOVIET DICTATORSHIP , .302
XL CONCLUSION 344

APPENDIX I: SOME LEGENDS OF THE BUREAU-
CRACY 353

APPENDIX II: SOCIALISM IN A SEPARATE "COUN-
TRY 378

APPENDIX III: HISTORIC REFERENCES ON THE
THEORY OF "PERMANENT REVOLUTION" . .419

INDEX TO THE COMPLETE HISTORY 429

THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION

The Triumph of the Soviets

CHAPTER I
THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

I VILIZ ATION has made the peasantry its pack animal.
I. The bourgeoisie in the long run only changed the form
of the pacE^Barely tolerated on the threshold of the na-
tional life, the peasant stands essentially outside the threshold
of science. The historian is ordinarily as little interested in him
as the dramatic critic is in those gray figures who shift the
scenery, carrying the heavens and earth on their backs, and scrub
the dressing-rooms of the actors. The part played by the peas-
antry in past revolutions remains hardly cleared up to this day.

"The French bourgeoisie began by liberating the peasantry/*
wrote Marx in 1848. "With the help of the peasantry they con-
quered Europe. The Prussian bourgeoisie was so blinded by its
own narrow and close-by interests that it lost even this ally, and
turned it into a weapon in the hands of the feudal counter-
revolution." In this contrast what relates to the German bour-
geoisie is true; but the assertion that "the French bourgeoisie be-
gan by liberating the peasantry" is an echo of that official French
legend which exercised an influence in its day even upon Marx.
In reality the bourgeoisie, in the proper sense of the term, op-
posed the peasant revolution with all the power it had. Even from
the rural instructions of 1789 the local leaders of the Third
Estate threw out, under the guise of editing, the keenest and
most bold demands. The famous decision of August 4th, adopted
by the National Assembly amid the glow of rural conflagrations,
long remained a pathetic formula without content. The peasants
who would not reconcile themselves to this deceit were adjured
by the Constituent Assembly to "return to the fulfillment of
their duties and have the proper respect for [feudal!] property."
The civil guard tried more than once to put down the peasantry
in the country. But the city workers, taking the side of those in
revolt, met the bourgeois punitive expeditions with stones and
broken tile.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

were disorganized, the local commissars were powerless. "We
elected you," the peasants would shout at them, "and we will
kick you out.''

During the summer the peasants, developing the struggle of
the preceding months, came nearer and nearer to civil war, and
their left wing even stepped over its threshold. According to a
report of the landed proprietors of the Taganrog district, the
peasants on their own initiative seized the hay crop, took posses-
sion of the land, hindered the plowing, named arbitrary rental
prices, and removed proprietors and overseers. According to a re-
port of the Nizhegorod commissar, violent activities and seizures
of land and forest in his province were multiplying. The county
commissars were afraid of seeming to the peasants like defenders
of the big landlords. The rural militia were not to be relied on.
"There have been cases when officers of the militia took part in
violence together with the mob/* In Schliisselburg county a local
committee prevented the landlords from cutting their own forest.
The thought of the peasants was simple: No Constituent As-
sembly can resurrect the trees that are cut down. The commissar
of the Ministry of the Court complains of the seizure of hay:
We have had to buy hay for the court horses! In Kursk province
the peasants divided among themselves the fertilized fallow land
of Tereshchenko. The proprietor was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The peasants declared to Schneider, a horse breeder of Orlov
province, that they would not only cut the clover on his estate,
but him too they might "send into the army." The village com-
mittee directed the overseer of Rodzianko's estate to surrender
the hay to the peasants: "If you don't listen to this land com-
mittee, you'll get treated different, youll get arrested. . . ."
Signed and sealed.

From all corners of the country complaints and wails poured
in from victims, from local authorities, from noble-minded ob-
servers. The telegrams of the land-owners constitute a most bril-
liant refutation of the crude theory of class struggle. -These titled
nobles, lords of the latifundia, spiritual and temporal rulers, are
worrying exclusively about the public weal Their enemy Is not
the peasants, but the Bolsheviks sometimes the anarchists. Their

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

own property engages the landlord's interest solely from the point
of view of the welfare of the fatherland. Three hundred members
of the Kadet Party in Chernigov province declare that the peas-
ants, incited by Bolsheviks, are removing the war prisoners from
work and themselves independently reaping the harvest. As a re-
sult, they cry, we are threatened with "inability to pay the taxes."
The very meaning of existence for these liberal landlords lay in
supporting the national treasury! The Podolsk branch of the
State Bank complains of the arbitrary actions of village com-
mittees, "whose presidents are often Austrian prisoners." Here it
is injured patriotism that speaks. In Vladimir province, in the
manor of a registrar of deeds, Odintsov, the peasants took away
building materials that had been "made ready for philanthropic
institutions." Public officials live only for the love of mankind!
A bishop from Podolsk reports the arbitrary seizure of a forest
belonging to the house of the Archbishop. The procurator com-
plains of the seizure of meadowlands from the Alexandro-
Nevsky Monastery. The Mother Superior of the Kizliarsk Con-
vent calls down thunder and lightning upon the members of the
local committee: They are interfering in the affairs of the con-
vent, confiscating rentals for their own use, "inciting the nuns
against their superiors." In all these cases the spiritual interests of
the church are directly affected. Count Tolstoi, one of the sons of
Leo Tolstoi, reports in the name of the League of Agriculturists
of Ufimsk province that the transfer of land to the local com-
mittees "without waiting for a decision of the Constituent As-
sembly ... is causing an outburst of dissatisfaction * * *
among the peasant proprietors, of whom there are more than
200,000 in the province." The hereditary lord is troubled ex-
clusively about his lesser brothers. Senator Belgardt, a proprietor
of Tver province, is ready to reconcile himself to cuttings in the
forest, but is grieved and offended that the peasants "will not
submit to the bourgeois government." A Tombov landlord,
Veliaminov, 'demands the rescue of two estates which "are serving
the needs of the army." By accident these two estates happened
to belong to him. For the philosophy of idealism these landlord
telegrams of 1917 are verily a treasure. A materialist will rather

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

see in them a display of the various models of cynicism. He will
add perhaps that great revolutions deprive the property-holders
even of the privilege of dignified hypocrisy.

The appeals of the victims to the county and provincial au-
thorities, to the Minister of the Interior, to the President of the
Council of Ministers, brought as a general rule no result. From
whom then shall we ask aid? From Rodzianko, president of the
State Duma! Between the July Days and the Kornilov insurrec-
tion, the Lord Chamberlain again felt himself an influential
figure: much was done at a ring from his telephone.

The functionaries of the Ministry of the Interior send out
circulars to the localities about bringing the guilty to trial The
brusque landlords of Samara telegraph in answer: "Circulars
without the signature of the socialist minister have no force.*'
The function of socialism is thus revealed. Tseretelli is compelled
to overcome his bashfulness. On the 18th of July he sends out a
wordy instruction about taking "swift and decisive measures."
Like the landlords themselves, Tseretelli worries solely about the
army and the state. It seems to the peasants, however, that Tsere-
telli is protecting the landlords.

There came a sudden change in the government's method of
pacifying the peasants. Up to July the prevailing method had
been talking them out of it. If military detachments were also
sent into the localities, it was only in the capacity of a guard for
the government orator. After the victory over the Pctrograd
workers and soldiers, however, cavalry troops now without
vocal persuaders put themselves directly at the disposal of the
landlords. In Kazan province, one of the most tumultuous, they
succeeded to quote the young historian, Yugov "only by
means of arrests, by bringing armed troops into the villages, and
even by reviving the custom of flogging . . . in reducing the
peasants to submission." In other places, too, these measures of
repression were not without effect. The number of damaged
landlord properties fell somewhat in July: from $16 to SO 3, In
August the government achieved still further successes: the num-
ber of unsatisfactory counties fell from 325 to 288 that is, 11
per cent; the number of properties involved in the movement
was even reduced 3 3 per cent.

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

Certain districts, heretofore the most restless, now quiet down
or retire to second place. On the other hand, districts which were
reliable yesterday now come into the struggle. Only a month ago
the Penza commissar was painting a consoling picture: "The
country is busy reaping the harvest. . . . Preparations are under
way for the elections to the village zemstvos. The period of gov-
ernmental crisis passed quietly. The formation of the new gov-
ernment was greeted with great satisfaction," In August there
is not a trace left of this idyll. "Mass depredations upon orchards
and the cutting down of forests. ... To quell the disorders, we
have had to resort to armed force."

In its general character the summer movement still belongs
to the "peaceful" period. However, unmistakable, although in-
deed weak, symptoms of radicalization are already to be observed*
Whereas in the first four months cases of direct attack upon the
landlords' manors decreased, from July on they begin to increase.
Investigators have established in general the following classifica-
tion of the July conflicts, arranged in a diminishing order start-
ing with the most numerous: Seizure of meadows, of crops, of
food-stuffs and fodder, of plowed fields, of implements; conflict
over the conditions of employment; destruction of manors. In
August the order is as follows: Seizure of crops, of reserve provi-
sions and fodder, of meadows and hay, of land and forest;
agrarian terror.

At the beginning of September Kerensky, in his capacity of
commander-m-chief, issued a special order repeating the recent
arguments and threats of his predecessor, Kornilov, against "vio-
lent activities" on the part of the peasants. A few days later Lenin
wrote: "Either ... all the land to the peasants immedi-
ately . . . or the landlords and capitalists . . . will bring things
to the point of an endlessly ferocious peasant revolt," During the
months following this became a fact.

The number of properties affected by agrarian conflicts in
September rose 30 per cent over that in August; in October, 43
per cent over that in September. In September and the first three
weeks of October there occurred over a third as many agrarian
conflicts as all those recorded since March. Their resoluteness rose,
however, incomparably faster than their number. During the

THE TRIUMPH Of THE SOVIETS

first months even direct seizures of various appurtenances wore
the aspect of bargains mitigated and camouflaged by the com-
promisist institutions. Now the legal mask falls away* Every
branch of the movement assumes a more audacious character*
From, various forms and degrees of pressure, the peasants are now
passing over to violent seizures of the various parts of the land-
lord's business, to the extermination of the nests of the gentility,
the burning of manors, even the murder of proprietors and over-
seers.

The struggle for a change in the conditions of rent, which in
June exceeded in number of cases the destructive movement, falls
in October to one-fortieth the number. Moreover the rent move-
ment itself changes its character, becoming merely another way
of driving out the landlord. The veto on buying and selling land
and forest gives place to direct seizure, The mass wood -cut tings
and mass grazings acquire the character of a deliberate destruc-
tion of the landlord's goods. In September 279 cases of open de-
struction of property are recorded; they now constitute more
than one eighth of all the conflicts. Over 42 per cent of all the
cases of destruction recorded by the militia between the February
and the October revolution occurred in the month of October.

The struggle for the forests was especially bitter, Whole vil-
lages were frequently burned to the ground. The timber was
strongly guarded and selling at a high price; the muzhik was
starving for timber; moreover the time had come to lay up fire-
wood for the winter. Complaints came in from Moscow, Nizhe-
gorod, Petrograd, Orel, and Volyn provinces- from all corners
of the country about the destruction of forests and the seizure
of the reserves of corded wood, "The peasants are arbitrarily and
ruthlessly cutting down the forest. Two hundred dessiatins of
the landlords* forest have been burned by the peasants." "The
peasants of Klimovichesky and Cherikovsky counties are destroy-
ing the forests and laying waste the winter-wheat, . . , M The
forest guards are in flight; the landlords' forests are groaning;
the chips are flying throughout the whole country* All that au-
tumn the muzhik's axe was feverishly beating time for the revo-
lution.

In the districts which imported grain the food situation in

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

Jr -,j|i- j-_j-.j-.-rxj~- -J~ u~-j^L-.j-iL-ii~-j-uni.j-_a~j~_-_a-_>-i_< jp^ji~jr"-jr.^r'i-jr'~*" -*r_ri.jr jrup^urur jr j- jr~-r~..r~'njr- P".iir"iiir* m""" i"*

the villages deteriorated at a faster pace than in the city. Not
only food was lacking, but seed. In the exporting regions, in
consequence of a redoubled pumping out of food resources, the
situation was but little better. The raising of the fixed price of
grain hit the poor. In a number of provinces there occurred
hunger riots, plundering of granaries, assaults on the institutions
of the Food Administration, The population resorted to substi-
tutes for bread. Reports came in of cases of scurvy and typhus,
of suicides from despair. Hunger and its advancing shadow made
the neighborhood of opulence and luxury especially intolerable.
The more destitute strata of the villages moved into the front
ranks of the fight.

These waves of bitter feeling raised up no little slime from
the bottom. In Kostroma province "a Black Hundred and anti-
Jew agitation is observed. Criminality is on the increase. . . * A
waning of interest in the political life of the country is notice-
able." This latter phrase in the report of the commissar means:
The educated classes are turning their back on the revolution.
The voice of Black Hundred monarchism suddenly rings out
from Podolsk province: The committee of the village of Demi-
dovka does not recognize the Provisional Government and con-
siders the tzar Nikolai Alexandrovich "the most loyal leader of
the Russian people. If the Provisional Government does not re-
tire, we will join the Germans." Such bold acknowledgements,
however, are unique. The monarchists among the peasants have
long ago changed color, following the example of the landlords.
In places for instance, in that same Podolsk province military
detachments in company with the peasants invade the wine cel-
lars. The commissar reports anarchy. "The villages and the people
are perishing; the revolution is perishing." No, the revolution is
far from perishing. It is digging itself a deeper channel. The rag-
ing waters are nearing their mouth.

On a night about the 8th of September, the peasants of the
village Sychevka in Tombov province, going from door to door
armed with clubs and pitchforks, called out everybody, small and
great, to raid the landlord, Romanov. At a village meeting one
group proposed that they take the estate in an orderly fashion,
divide the property among the population, and keep the butfd-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

ings for cultural purposes. The poor demanded that they burn
the estate, leaving not one stone upon another. The poor were in
the majority. On that same night an ocean of fire swallowed up
the estates of the whole township* Everything inflammable was
burned, even the experimental fields. The breeding cattle were
slaughtered. "They were drunk to madness." The flames jumped
over from township to township. The rustic warriors were now
no longer content with the patriarchal scythe and pitchfork. A
provincial commissar telegraphed: "Peasants and unknown per-
sons armed with revolvers and hand grenades are raiding the
manors in Ranenburg and Riazhsky counties/* It was the war
that introduced this high technique into the peasant revolt. The
League of Landowners reported that 24 estates were burned in
three days. 'The local authorities were powerless to restore order."
After some delay troops arrived, sent by the district commander.
Martial law was declared, meetings forbidden, the instigators ar-
rested. Ravines were filled with the landlord's possessions and
much of the booty was sunk in the river*

A Penxa peasant, Begishev, relates; "In September all rode
out to raid Logvin (he was raided in 1905, too)- A troop of
teams and wagons streamed out to his estate and back, hundreds
of muzhiks and wenches began to drive and carry off his cattle,
grain, etc." A detachment called out by the land administration
tried to get back some of the booty, but the muzhiks and wenches
assembled 500 strong in the village, and the detachment dis-
persed. The soldiers were evidently not at all eager to restore the
trampled rights of the landlord. In Tauride province, beginning
with the last days of September, according to the recollections
of the peasant, Gaponenko, "the peasants began to raid the build-
ings, drive out the overseers, take the work animals, the ma-
chinery, the grain from the granaries. * . , They even tore of?
the blinds from the windows, the doors from their frames, the
floors from the rooms, and the zinc roofs, and carried them
away, . , /* "At first they only came on foot, took what they
could and lugged it off," relates Grunko, a peasant from Minsk,
"but afterwards they hitched up the horses, whoever had any,
and carried things away in whole wagon-loads. There was no

THE PEASANTS

room to pass. They just dragged and carried things off, beginning
at twelve o'clock noon, for two days and two nights without a
stop. In those forty-eight hours they cleaned out everything/*
The seizure of property, according to a Moscow peasant, Kuz~
michev, was justified as follows: "The landlord was ours, we
worked for him, and the property he had ought to belong to us
alone/' Once upon a time the landlords used to say to the serfs:
"You are mine and what is yours is mine." Now the peasants were
giving their answer: "He was our lord and all his goods are ours."

"In several localities they began to knock up the landlords
in the night/' remembers another Minsk peasant, Novikov.
"Oftener and oftener they would burn the landlord's manor/' It
came the turn of the estate of the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaie-
vich, former commander-in-chief. "When they had taken away
all they could get, they began breaking up the stoves, removing
the flue-plates, ripping up the floors and planks, and dragging it
all home, . . /'

Behind these destructive activities stood the century-old,
thousand-year-old strategy of all peasant wars: to raze to the
ground the fortified position of the enemy. Leave him no place
to cover his head. ""The more reasonable ones," remembers a
Kursk peasant, Tzygankov, "would say *We must not burn up
the buildings they will be of use to us for schools and hospitals/
but the majority were the kind that shout out 'We must destroy
everything so that in case anything happens our enemy will have
no place to hide/ " "The peasants seized all the landlords' prop-
erty," relates an Orel peasant, Savchenko, "drove the landlords
out of the estates, smashed the windows, doors, ceilings and floors
of the landlords' houses. . , . The soldiers said *if you destroy
the wolves' nests, you must strangle the wolves too/ Through
such threats the biggest and most important landlords hid out,
and for that reason there was no murder of landlords."

In the village of Zalessye, in Vitebsk province, they burned
barns full of grain and hay in the estate belonging to a French-
man, Barnard. The muzhiks were the less inclined to investigate
questions of nationality, since many of the landlords had trans-
ferred their land in a hurry to privileged foreigners. "The French

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

embassy requests that measures be taken. * *" In the front
region in the middle of October it was difficult to take f *meas-
ures," even in behalf of the French embassy*

The destruction of the great estates near Riaxan continued
four days. "Even children took part in the looting*" The League
of Landed Proprietors brought to the attention of the ministers
that if measures were not taken "lynch-law, famine and civil war
would break out," It is difficult to understand why the landlords
were still speaking of civil war in the future tense. At a congress
of the cooperatives at the beginning of September, Berkeftheim,
one of the leaders of the strong trading peasantry, saids "I am
convinced that not yet all Russia has become a madhouse, that as
yet for the most part only the population of the big tides has
gone mad," This self-complacent voice of the solid and conserva-
tive part of the peasantry was hopelessly behind the tiUnes* It was
during that very month that the villages totally broke loose from
all the nooses of reason, and the ferocity of their struggle left the
"madhouse" of the cities far behind.

In April Lenin had still considered it possible that the patri-
otic cooperators and the kulaks would drag the main mass of the
peasantry after them along the road of compromise with the
bourgeoisie and the landlord For this reason he so tirelessly in-
sisted upon the creation of special Soviets of farm hands* deputies,
and upon independent organizations of the poorest peasantry.
Month by month it became clear, however, that this part of the
Bolshevik policy would not take root. Except in the Baltic state
there were no Soviets of farm hands. The peasant poor also failed
to find independent forms of organization, To explain this merely
by the backwardness of the farm hands and the poorest strata
of the villages, would be to miss the essence of the thing, The
chief cause lay in the substance of the historic task itself a demo-
cratic agrarian revolution*

Upon the two principal questions, rent and hired labor, it
becomes convincingly clear how the general interests of a struggle
against the relics of serfdom cut off the road to an independent
policy not only for the poor peasants, but for the hired hands.
The peasants rented from the landlords in European Russia 27

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

milficJj? never wore armyaki and lapti l and therefore will never

j anc j a pur interests." Pushing away from the liberals, the la-

The stru* r P r i etor would look around for such "socialists" as
February 3 * 11 ^ f r property rights. One of the delegates came out
A small^ a " democracy. "The worker Y 9 he said. "Give him land
struggle 1 *^ come to the village and stop spitting blood. The social
positionY ? w ^ not ta ^ e ^ ^ an< ^ awa 7 from us/' He was speak-
ploiters;* mrse > ^ ^ Mensheviks. ""We will not give away our
conditictfOtybody. Those will easily part with it who easily got it
tions of labor J e the l a *idlord, but the peasant had a har^ ut by
recognizing thi"- ^ ^ <ut as soon

as the possibility 110 eriu of carrying the^Thfu^Sg^bugh to the
end that is, of T %ing the land and occupying it themselves
the poor peasant^ ceased to be interested in questions of rent,
and the trade union began to lose its attraction for the hired hand.
It was these rural workers and poor tenants who by joining the
general movement gave its ultimate determination to the peasant
war and made it irrevocable.

But the campaign against the landlord did not draw in quite
so completely the opposite pole of the village. So long as it did
not come to open revolt, the upper circles of the peasantry played
a prominent r6le in the movement, at times a leading role. In the
autumn period, however, the well-to-do muzhiks looked with
continually increasing distrust at the spread of the peasant war.
They did not know how this would end; they had something to
lose; they stood aside. But they did not succeed in holding off
entirely: the village would not permit it.

More reserved and hostile than "our own" communal kulaks,
were the small land-owners standing outside the commune. In the
whole country there were 600,000 homesteads of peasants own-
ing plots up to JO dessiatins. In many localities they constituted
the backbone of the cooperatives, and gravitated, especially in
the south, toward the conservative Peasant Union which had
already become a bridge toward the Kadets* "The secessionists 1
and rich peasants," according to Guliss, a Minsk peasant, "sup-

1 Peasants who had left the commune and taken private land under Stolypin'a
law of November 9th, 1906. Trans.

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER. ^

Kadets never wore armyaki and lapti l and therefore will never
defend our interests." Pushing away from the liberals, the la-
boring proprietor would look around for such "socialists" as
would stand for property rights. One of the delegates came out
for the social democracy. "The worker?" he said. "Give him land
and he will come to the village and stop spitting blood. The social
democrats will not take the land away from us/' He was speak-
ing, of course, of the Mensheviks. "We will not give away our
land to anybody. Those will easily part with it who easily got it,
as for example, the landlord, but the peasant had a hard time
getting the land."

In that autumn period the villages were struggling with the
kulaks, not throwing them off, but compelling them to adhere to
the general movement and defend it against blows from the
right. There were even cases where a refusal to participate in a
raid was punished by the death of the culprit. The kulak maneu-
vered while he could, but at the last moment, scratching the back
of his head once more, hitched the well-fed horses to the iron-
rimmed wagon and went out for his share. It was often the lion's
share. "The well-to-do got the most out of it," says the Penza
peasant, Begishev, "those who had horses and free men." Sav-
chenko from Orel expressed himself in almost the same words:
"The kulaks mostly got the best of it, being well-fed and with
something to draw the wood in."

According to the calculations of Vermenichev, to 4,954
agrarian conflicts with landlords between February and October,
there were 324 conflicts with the peasant bourgeoisie. An ex-
traordinarily clear correlation! It alone firmly establishes the fact
that the peasant movement of 1917 was directed in its social
foundations not against capitalism, but against the relics of serf-
dom. The struggle against kulakism developed later, in 19 1 8, after
the conclusive liquidation of the landlord.

This purely democratic character of the peasant movement,
which should, it would seem, have given the official democracy
an inconquerable power, did in fact completely reveal its rotten-
ness. If you look at the thing from above, the peasants were

1 Armyak Is a home-made woollen coat, lapti are shoes made out of woven strips
of bark. Trans.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

wholly led by the Social Revolutionaries, elected them, followed
them, almost blended with them. At the May congress of peasant
Soviets, in the elections to the executive committee, Chernov re-
ceived 810 votes, Kerensky 804, whereas Lenin got only 20 votes
all in all. It was not for nothing that Chernov dubbed himself
Rural Minister! But it was not for nothing, either, that the
strategy of the villages brusquely parted company with Cher-
nov's strategy. Their industrial isolation makes the peasants, so
determined in struggle with a concrete landlord, impotent before
the general landlord incarnate in the state. Hence the organic
need of the muzhiks to rely upon some legendary state as against
the real one. In olden times they created pretenders, they united
round an imagined Golden Edict of the tzar, or around the legend
of a righteous world* After the February revolution they united
round the Social Revolutionary banner "Land and Freedom,"
seeking help in it against the liberal landlord who had become
a governmental commissar. The Narodmk program bore the
same relation to the real government of Kerensky, as the imagined
edict of the tzar to the real autocrat.

In the program of the Social Revolutionaries there was always
much that was Utopian. They hoped to create socialism on the
basis of a petty trade economy. But the foundation of their pro-
gram was democratically revolutionary: to take the land from
the landlord. When confronted with the necessity of carrying out
its program, the party got tangled up in a coalition. Not only the
landlords rose against the confiscation of the land, but also the
Kadet bankers. The banks had loaned against real estate no less
than four billion rubles. Intending to dicker with the landlords at
the Constituent Assembly regarding prices but end things in a
friendly manner, the Social Revolutionaries zealously kept the
muzhik away from the land. They went to pieces, therefore, not
on the Utopian character of their socialism, but on their demo-
cratic inconsistency. It might have taken years to test out their
utopianism. Their betrayal of agrarian democracy became clear
in a few months. Under a government of Social Revolutionaries
the peasants had to take the road of insurrection in order to carry
out the Social Revolutionary program.

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

In July, when the government was coming down on the vil-
lages with measures of repression, the peasants in hot haste ran
for defense to those same Social Revolutionaries. From Pontius
the young they appealed for protection to Pilate the old. The
month of the greatest weakening of the Bolsheviks in the cities
was the month of the greatest expansion of the Social Revolu-
tionaries in the country. As usually happens, especially in a revo-
lutionary epoch, the maximum of organizational scope coincided
with the beginning of a political decline. Hiding behind Social
Revolutionaries from the blows of a Social Revolutionary govern-
ment, the peasants steadily lost confidence both in the govern-
ment and the party. Thus the swelling out of the Social Revolu-
tionary organizations in the villages became fatal to this universal
party, which was rebelling at the bottom but restoring order at
the top.

In Moscow at a meeting of the Military Organization on the
30th of July, a delegate from the front, himself a Social Revolu-
tionary, said: Although the peasants still think themselves Social
Revolutionaries, a rift has formed between them and the party.
The soldiers confirmed this: Under the influence of Social Revo-
lutionary agitation the peasants are still hostile to the Bolsheviks,
but in practice they decide the questions of land and power in a
Bolshevik manner. The Bolshevik, Povolzhsky, who worked in
the Volga region, testifies that the most respected Social Revolu-
tionaries, those who had taken part in the movement of 1905,
were more and more feeling themselves pushed aside: "The
muzhiks called them 'old men/ treating them with external defer-
ence, but voting in their own way." It was the workers and sol-
diers who had taught the villages to vote and take action "in their
own way." It is impossible to weigh the influence of the revolu-
tionary workers upon the peasantry. It was continuous, molecu-
lar, penetrating everywhere, and therefore not capable of calcu-
lation. A mutual penetration was made easier by the fact that a
considerable number of the industrial plants were situated in
rural districts. But even the workers of Petrograd, the most
European of the cities, kept up a close connection with their
native villages. Unemployment, increasing during the summer

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

months, and the lockouts of the employers, threw back many
thousands of workers into the villages. A majority of them be-
came agitators and leaders.

From May to June there were created in Petrograd back-
home clubs corresponding to different provinces, counties and
even villages. Whole columns in the workers' press were devoted
to announcements of back -home club meetings, where reports
about journeys to the villages would be heard, instructions drawn
up for delegates, and money collected for agitation. Not long be-
fore the uprising, these clubs united round a special central
bureau under the leadership of the Bolsheviks- This back-home
club movement soon spread to Moscow* Tver* and probably to a
number of other industrial cities*

However, in the matter of direct influence upon the village
the soldiers were still more important. It was only in the artificial
conditions of the front or in the city barrack that the young
peasants, overcoming to a certain degree their isolation, would
come face to face with problems of nation-wide scope. Here too,
however, their political dependence made itself felt. While con-
tinually falling under the leadership of patriotic and conservative
intellectuals and then striving to get free of them, the peasants
tried to organise in the army separately from other social groups*
The authorities looked unfavorably upon these inclinations, the
War Ministry opposed them, the Social Revolutionaries did not
welcome them. The Soviets of peasants* deputies took but weak
root in the army. Even under the most favorable conditions the
peasant is unable to convert his overwhelming quantity into a
political quality! Only in the big revolutionary centers under the
direct influence of the workers did the Soviets of peasant soldiers
succeed in developing any important work. Thus between April
1917 and January 1, I? 18 the peasant soviet in Petrograd sent
1,395 agitators into the villages with special mandates; and about
the same number went without mandates. These delegates cov-
ered 65 provinces* In Kronstadt back-home clubs were formed
among the sailors and soldiers, following the example of the work-
ers, and they supplied their delegates with credentials giving
them the "right* * to free passage on railroads and steamboats* The

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

private lines accepted these papers without a murmur. Conflicts
arose on the government lines.

These official delegates of organizations were after all, how-
ever, mere drops in the peasant ocean. An infinitely greater work
was accomplished by those hundreds of thousands and millions
of soldiers who quit the front and the rear garrisons of their own
accord with the strong slogans of mass-meeting speeches ringing
in their ears. Those who had sat silent at the front became gar-
rulous at home in the villages. They found no lack of greedy
listeners. "Among the peasantry surrounding Moscow," says
Muralov, one of the Moscow Bolsheviks, "there was a tremendous
swing to the left. . . * The villages and towns of Moscow prov-
ince were swarming with deserters from the front. They were
visited also by city proletarians who had not yet cut off their
connections with the country." The dreamy and backward vil-
lages of Kaluga province, according to the peasant Naumchenkov
"were waked up by soldiers coming home from the front for
various reasons during June and July." The Nizhegorod com-
missar reports that "all the lawbreaking and lawlessness is con-
nected with the appearance within the boundaries of the province
of deserters, soldiers on furlough, or delegates from the regimental
committees." The overseer of the properties of Princess Bariatin-
sky of Zolotonoshzky county complains in August of the arbi-
trary acts of the land committee whose president is a Kronstadt
sailor, Gatran. "Soldiers and sailors on furlough," reports the
commissar of Bugulminsk county, "are carrying on an agitation
with a view to creating anarchy and a pogrom state of mind,"
"In Mglinsk county, in the village of Bielogosh, an arriving sailor
on his own authority forbade the preparation and export of fire-
wood and railroad ties from the forest," And when it was not
the soldiers who began the struggle, it was they who finished it.
In Nizhegorod county the muzhiks harried a convent, cut the
meadow grass, broke down the fences, and bothered the nuns.
The mother superior refused to give in, and the militia would
carry off the muzhiks and punish them. "So the thing dragged
along," writes the peasant Arbekov, "until the soldiers arrived.
The buddies immediately took the bull by the horns. . . /* The

THE TRIUMPH OP THE SOVIETS

convent was cleaned out. In Moghiliev province, according to the
peasant Bobkov, "the soldiers home from the front were the first
leaders in the committee, and directed the expulsion of the land-
lords."

The men from the front introduced into the business the
heavy determination of people accustomed to handle their fellow-
men with rifle and bayonet, liven the soldiers' wives caught this
fighting mood from their husbands. Says the Penza peasant, Begl-
shev: "In September there was a strong movement of soldiers*
wives who spoke at meetings in favor of the raids/* The same
thing was observed in other provinces. In the cities* too, the sol-
diers' wives were often the leaven in the lump.

Those cases in which soldiers took the lead in peasant disor-
ders constituted in March, according to Vermenichev*s calcula-
tions, 1 per cent, in April 8 per cent, in September 1 2 per cent,
and in October 17 per cent. These figures cannot pretend to be
accurate, but they show the general tendency unmistakably. The
dying leadership of the Social Revolutionary teachers, town-
clerks and functionaries, was giving place to the leadership of
soldiers who would stop at nothing*

Parvus, a German Marxian writer prominent in his day, who
succeeded in acquiring wealth and losing both his principles and
his penetration during the war, has compared the Russian soldiers
with the mercenary troopers, robbers and hold-up men of medie-
val times. For this it is necessary to shut one's eyes to the fact that
in all their lawlessness the Russian soldiers remained merely the
executive organ of the greatest agrarian revolution in history.

So long as the movement had not broken completely with
legality, the sending of troops into the villages preserved a sym-
bolic character. In practice it was almost the Cossacks alone who
could be used as punitive troops. "Four hundred Cossacks were
sent into Scrdobsky county * . this measure had a rranquiliz-
Ing effect; the peasants declared that they would await the Con-
stituent Assembly," says the liberal paper, Jkusskoe Sfh t on the
llth of October. Four hundred Cossacks is certainly an argument
in favor of the Constituent Assembly. But there were not enough
Cossacks, and moreover they too were uncertain. Meantime the
government was oftener and oftener being compelled to "take

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER.

decisive measures." During the first four months of the revolu-
tion Vermenichev counts 17 cases in which armed forces were
sent against the peasants; in July and August, 39 cases; in Sep-
tember and October, 105 cases.

To put down the peasantry by armed force was only to pour
oil on the fire. In a majority of cases the soldiers went over to the
peasants. A county commissar of Podolsk province reports: "The
army organizations and even individual units are deciding social
and economic questions, are forcing (?) the peasants to carry
out seizures and cut the forest, and at times, in certain localities,
they themselves take part in the looting. . . . The local military
units refuse to join in putting down acts of violence. . . ." Thus
the rural revolt loosened the last bolts of the army. There was
not the slightest possibility that in the circumstances of a peasant
war headed by the workers, the army would permit itself to be
thrown against the insurrection in the cities.

From the workers and soldiers the peasants first learned some-
thing new something other than what the Social Revolution-
aries had told them about the Bolsheviks. The slogans of Lenin,
and his name, penetrated the villages. The steadily increasing
complaints against Bolsheviks were, however, in many cases in-
vented or exaggerated. The landlords hoped in this way to make
more sure of getting help. "In Ostrovsky county complete an-
archy reigns, a consequence of Bolshevik propaganda," From
Ufa province comes the news: "A member of a village committee,
Vassiliev, is distributing the program of the Bolsheviks and openly
declaring that the landlords are to be hanged." In seeking "pro-
tection from robbery" the Novgorod landlord, Polonnik, does
not forget to add: "The Executive Committees are brimful of
Bolsheviks." That means that they are unfavorable to the land-
lord. "In August," remembers a Simbirsk peasant, Zumorin,
"workers began to make the rounds of the villages, agitating for
the Bolshevik party and telling about its program." An investi-
gator of Sebezh county tells about the arrival from Petrograd of
a weaver Tatiana Mikhailova, 26 years old, who "called on the
people of her village to overthrow the Provisional Government,
and praised the tactics of Lenin." In Smolensk province towards
the end of August, according to the peasant Kotov, ""We began to

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

interest ourselves in Lenin, began to listen to the voice of
Lenin, .- . ." In the village zernstvo, however, they were still
electing an immense majority of Social Revolutionaries.

The Bolshevik party was trying to get closer to the peasant.
On the 10th of September Nevsky demanded that the Pc % trograd
committee undertake the publication of a peasant newspaper:
"We must fix things so that we shall not have the experience of
the French Commune, where the peasantry did not understand
Paris and Paris did not understand the peasantry/ 1 The news-
paper, Byednotd) soon came out. But even so s the purely party
work among the peasants remained insignificant. The strength
of the Bolshevik party lay not in technical resources, not in ma-
chinery, but in a correct policy* As air currents carry seeds, the
whirlwinds of the revolution scattered the ideas of Lenin*

"By September/* remembers a Tver peasant* Vorobicv, "not
only the soldiers, but the poor peasants themselves were oftener
and more boldly beginning to come out at meetings in defense
of the Bolsheviks* . , , M This is confirmed by the Simbirsk peas-
ant, Zumortn: "Among the poor and some of the middle peasants
the name of Lenin was on everybody's lips; the talk was only of
Lenin." A Novgorod peasant, Grigoricv, tells how a Social Revo-
lutionary in the village called the Bolsheviks ''usurpers* 1 and
^traitors" and how the muzhiks thundered; "Down with the
dog! Pound him with rock! Don*t tell us any more fairy stories*
Where is the land? That's enough from you! Give us the Bol-
sheviks!** It is possible, by the way, that this episode and there
were many like it derives from the post-October period. Facts
stand strong in a peasant's memory but his chronology is weak.

The soldier Chinenov, who came back to his home m Orel
province with a trunkful of Bolshevik literature, had not been
welcomed by the home village* It's probably German gold, they
said* But in October "the village nucleus has 700 members and
many rifles, and always comes out in defense of the soviet power/*
The Bolshevik Vrachov tells how the peasants of the purely agri-
cultural province of Voronezh "woke up from the effects of the
Social Revolutionary fumes, and began to take an interest in our
party. Thanks to which we already had a number of village and
township locals and subscribers to our papers, and received many

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

ljr j ru j-_f-_ r .jf~-f~jr-*-~f--jr--~t--f~-f~^jr~^r-.jr- .jr--f~jr-jr-J~~r~r~r--r-ri-r~r-r- -f~-f j^-~~~j~ .r.jr- * -&JT* jr jr *~ r\ **~ \~

good fellows in the tiny headquarters of our committee." In
Smolensk province, according to the recollections of Ivanov,
"Bolsheviks were very rare in the villages. There were very few
of them in the counties. There were no Bolshevik papers. Leaflets
were very rarely given out. . . . And nevertheless the nearer it
came to October, the more the villages swung over to the Bol-
sheviks."

"In those counties where there was a Bolshevik influence in
the soviet before October," writes Ivanov again, "the element of
raids upon landlords' estates either did not appear, or appeared
only to a small extent." In this respect, however, it was not the
same everywhere. "The Bolshevik demand for the transfer of
land to the peasants," says, for example, Tadeush, "was taken up
with extraordinary rapidity by the mass of the peasants of
Moghiliev county, who laid waste the estates, in some cases burn-
ing them, and seized the harvests and the forest." In essence there
is no contradiction between these two testimonies. The general
agitation of the Bolsheviks undoubtedly nourished the civil war
in the country. But wherever the Bolsheviks had succeeded in
putting down firm roots, they naturally tried, without weaken-
ing the assault of the peasants, to regulate its forms and decrease
the amount of destruction.

The land question did not stand alone. The peasant suffered
especially during the last period of the war, both as seller and
buyer. Grain was taken from him at a fixed price, and the prod-
ucts of industry were becoming more and more unattainable.
The problem of economic correlation between the country and
the city, destined subsequently under the name of the "scissors"
to become the central problem of soviet economy, was already
showing its threatening face. The Bolsheviks were saying to the
peasants: The Soviets must seize the power, give you the land,
end the war, demobilize industry, establish workers* control of
production, and regulate the price relations between industrial
and agricultural products. However summary this answer may
have been, it did indicate the road. "The partition wall between
us and the peasantry," said Trotsky on the 10th of October at a
conference of factory committees, "is the little counsellors of
Avksentiev. We must break through this wall. We must explain

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

to the village that all the attempts of the worker to help the
peasant by supplying the village with agricultural implements
will give no result until workers* control of organized production
is established." The conference issued a manifesto to the peasants
in this sense.

The Petrograd workers created at the factories in those days
special commissions which would assemble metals, damaged parts,
and fragments for the use of a special center called "Worker To
Peasant." This scrap-iron was used for making the simplest ag-
ricultural implements and reserve parts* That first planned entry
of the workers into the process of production still tiny in scope
and with agitational aims prevailing over economic nevertheless
opened out a prospect for the near future. Frightened at this en-
trance of the Bolsheviks into the forbidden sphere of the village,
the peasant Executive Committee made an attempt to get hold
of the new enterprise. But the decrepit Compromisers were no
longer in any condition to compete with the Bolsheviks on the city
arena when the ground was already slipping from under their
feet in the villages.

The echoes of the Bolshevik agitation "so aroused the peasant
poor," writes Vorobicv* the Tver peasant, **that we may definitely
say: If October had not come in October it would have come
in November.** This colorful description of the political strength
of Bolshevism does not contradict the fact of its organisational
weakness. Only through such striking disproportions does a
revolution make its way. It is for this very reason, to tell the
truth, that its movement cannot be forced into the framework
of formal democracy. To accomplish the agrarian revolution,
whether in October or November, the peasantry had no other
course but to make use of the unravelling web of that same Social
Revolutionary party. Its left elements were hastily and unsys-
tematically forming a group under the pressure of the peasant
revolt following the Bolsheviks and competing with them.
During the coming months the political shift of the peasantry
will take place chiefly under the glossy banner of the Left Social
Revolutionaries. This ephemeral party will become a reflected
and unstable form of rural Bolshevism, a temporary bridge from
the peasant war to the proletarian revolution,

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

The agrarian revolution had to have its own local institutions.
How did they look? There existed several types of organization
in the village: state institutions such as the executive committee
of the township, the land and food committees; social institutions
like the Soviets; purely political institutions like the parties; and
finally organs of self-government exemplified in the town
zemstvos. The peasant Soviets had as yet developed only on a
province, or to some extent a county scale. There were few town
Soviets. The town zemstvos had been slow to take root. The land
and executive committees, on the other hand, although state
organs in design, became strange as it may seem at a first glance
the organs of the peasant revolution.

The head land committee, consisting of governmental func-
tionaries, landlords, professors, scientific agriculturists, Social
Revolutionary politicians and an admixture of dubious peasants,
became in essence the main brake of the agrarian revolution. The
province committees never ceased to be the conducting wires of
the governmental policy. The county committees oscillated be-
tween the peasants and the men higher up. The town commit-
tees, however elected by the peasants and working right there
before the eyes of the village became the instruments of the
agrarian movement. The circumstance that the members of these
committees usually registered as Social Revolutionaries made no
difference. They kept step with the peasant's hut and not the
lord's manor. The peasants especially treasured the state char-
acter of their land committees, seeing in this a sort of patent-
right to civil war.

"The peasants say that they recognize nothing but the town
committee," complains one of the chiefs of militia in Saransky
county as early as May. "All the county and city committees,
they say, work for the landlords." According to a Nizhegorod
commissar, "the attempts of certain town committees to oppose
the independent action of the peasants almost always ends in
failure and brings about a change of membership of the com-
mittee." According to Denissov, a peasant from Pskov, "the
committees were always on the side of the peasants' movement
against the landlord because the most revolutionary part of the
peasantry and soldiers from the front were elected to them.*'

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The county, and more especially the province committees
were led by the functionary "intelligentsia/* which was trying
to keep up peaceful relations with the landlord* "The peasants
saw," writes the Moscow peasant, Yurkov, "that this was the
same coat only inside out, the same power but with another
name." "An effort is under way," reports the Kurksk commissar,
". , , to get new elections to the county committees, which are
invariably carrying out the directions of the Provisional Gov-
ernment." It was very hard, however, for the peasants to get
into the county committees. The Social Revolutionaries kept hold
of the political ties between the villages and townships, and the
peasants were thus compelled to act through a party whose chief
mission consisted of turning the old coat inside out*

The coolness of the peasantry toward the March Soviets, as-
tonishing at first glance, had as a matter of fact very deep causes.
The soviet was not a special organization like the land commit-
tee, but a universal organ of the revolution. Now in the sphere
of general politics the peasant cannot take a step without leader-
ship. The only question is, where is it to come from. The provin-
cial and county peasant Soviets were created on the initiative,
and to a considerable extent at the expense, of the cooperatives,
not as organs of a peasant revolution but as organs of a conserva-
tive guardianship over the peasants. The villagers tolerated these
Right Social Revolutionary Soviets standing above them as a
shield against the authorities. But at home, among themselves^
they preferred the land committees.

In order to prevent the village from shutting itself up in a
circle of "purely peasant interests/* the government made haste
to create democratic zemstvos. That alone was enough to put the
muzhik on his guard. It was frequently necessary to enforce the
elections- "There were cases of lawlessness/* reports the Penxa
commissar, "resulting in a break-up of the elections/* In Minsk
province the peasants arrested the president of the electoral com-
mission of the town, Prince Drutskoi-Liubetskoi, accusing him
of tampering with the lists. It was not easy for the muzhiks to
come to an agreement with him about the democratic solution of
their age-old quarrel The county commissar of Bugulminsk re-
ported: "The elections to the town icemstvos throughout the

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

county have not gone quite according to plan. . . . The mem-
bers of the electorate are exclusively peasants. There is a notice-
able estrangement from the local intelligentsia, especially from
the land-owners." In this form the zemstvo was but little differ-
ent from the committee. "The attitude of the peasant masses
toward the intelligentsia, and especially the land-owners," com-
plains the Minsk county commissar, "is adverse." "We read in a
Moghiliev newspaper of September 23rd: "Cultural work in the
county is accompanied with a certain risk, unless one categori-
cally promises to co-operate toward the immediate transfer of all
the land to the peasants/' Where agreement and even intercourse
between the fundamental classes of the population becomes im-
possible, the ground for democratic institutions disappears. The
still-birth of the town zemstvos unmistakably foretold the col-
lapse of the Constituent Assembly.

"The local peasantry," reports the Nizhegorod commissar,
"have got a fixed opinion that all civil laws have lost their force,
and that all legal relations ought now to be regulated by peasant
organizations." Getting control of the militia in certain locali-
ties, the town committees would issue local laws, establish rents,
regulate wages, put their own overseers on estates, take over the
land, the crops, the woods, the forests, the tools, take the ma-
chinery away from the landlords, and carry out searches and ar-
rests. The voice of centuries and the fresh experience of the revo-
lution both said to the muzhik that the question of land is a
question of power. The agrarian revolution needed the organs of
a peasant dictatorship. The muzhik did not yet know this latin
word, but the muzhik knew what he wanted. That "anarchy"
of which the landlords, liberal commissars, and compromise poli-
ticians complained, was in reality the first stage of the revolu-
tionary dictatorship in the village.

The necessity of creating special, purely peasant organs of
land revolution in the localities had been defended by Lenin
during the events of 1905-6. "The peasant revolutionary com-
mittees," he argued at the party congress in Stockholm, "present
the sole road along which the peasant movement can travel." The
muzhiks had not read Lenin, but Lenin knew how to read the
minds of the muzhiks.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The villages changed their attitude to the Soviets only in the
fall, when the Soviets themselves changed their political course.
The Bolshevik and Left Social Revolutionary Soviets in the county
or provincial city now no longer held back the peasants, but on
the contrary pushed them forward, Whereas during the first
months the villages had looked to the comprorntsist Soviets for
a legal covering, only to come later into hostile conflict with them,
now they first began to find in the revolutionary Soviets a real
leadership. The Saratov peasants wrote in September; "The power
throughout all Russia ought to go . - . to the Soviets of Work-
ers, Peasants and Soldiers* Deputies, That will be safer/' Only
in the fall did the peasantry begin to join their land program to
the slogan o Power to the Soviets, But here too they did not
know by whom or how these Soviets were to be led*

Agrarian disturbances in Russia had their great tradition,
their simple but clear program, their local martyrs and heroes*
The colossal experience of 190$ had not passed without leaving
its trace in the villages. And to this we must add the work of the
sectarian ideas which had taken hold of millions of peasants, I
knew many peasants/* writes a well-informed author, **who ac-
cepted - the October revolution as the direct realisation of
their religious hopes/* Of all the peasant revolts known to history
the movement of the Russian peasantry in l$\7 was undoubtedly
in the highest degree fertilized by political ideas* If nevertheless
it proved incapable of creating an independent leadership and
taking the power in its own hands, the causes of this are to be
found in the organic nature of an isolated, petty and routine
industry. While sucking all the juice out of the muzhik, his
economic position did not give him in return the ability to gen-
eralize.

The political freedom of a peasant means in practice the
ability to choose between different city parties. But even this
choice is not made a priori* The peasantry pushed the Bolsheviks
toward power with their revolt. But only after conquering the
power could the Bolsheviks win over the peasantry, converting
their agrarian revolution into the laws of a workers* state,

A group of investigators under the guidance of Yakovlev
have made an, extremely valuable classification of material, char-

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

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acterizing the evolution of the agrarian movement from Feb-
ruary to October. Designating the number of disorganized actions
in each month as 100, these investigators have estimated that
there were in April 33 organized conflicts, in June 86, in July
120. July was the moment of highest success of the Social Revolu-
tionary organizations in the country. In August for one hun-
dred disorganized conflicts there were only 62 organized, and in
October 14. From these figures wonderfully instructive al-
though of qualified significance Yakovlev draws a totally un-
expected conclusion. "Whereas up to August," he says, "the
movement had grown steadily more organized; in the fall it
acquired a more and more 'spontaneous' 1 character." Another
investigator, Vermenichev, arrives at the same formula: "The
lowering of the figure of organized movements in the period of
the pre-October waves, testifies to the spontaneousness of the
movements of those months." If the spontaneous is contrasted to
the conscious, as blindness to eyesight and this is the only scien-
tific contrast then we must come to the conclusion that the
consciousness of the peasant movement increased up to August,
and then began to fall rapidly enough to disappear completely at
the moment of the October insurrection. But this our investiga-
tors obviously did not wish to say. Taking a somewhat reflective
attitude to the question, it is not difficult to understand, for
example, that the peasant elections to the Constituent Assembly,
in spite of their externally "organized" character, were incom-
parably more "spontaneous" that is, thoughtless, sheeplike, blind
than the "disorganized" peasant campaigns against the land-
lord, where each peasant knew quite well what he wanted.

In the autumn crisis the peasants did not abandon conscious
action for spontaneousness, but abandoned compromisist leader-
ship for the civil war. The decline in organization was really a
superficial feature: the compromisist organization fell away, but
what it left was by no means a vacant space. The peasants came
out on the new road under the direct leadership of the most revo-
lutionary elements, the soldiers, sailors and workers. In entering

1 The Russian word translated "spontaneous" means literally elemental, and is
commonly contrasted in revolutionary literature to class-conscious movements led by
an organization with a theory and program. Trans.

THE TRIUMPH OF T7/E SOVIETS

upon decisive activities the peasants would quite often call a mass-
meeting, and even take pains that the resolution adopted should
be signed by all those living in the same village, "In the autumn
period of the peasant movement with its raiding forms/* writes a
third investigator, Shcstakov, "what oftcnest appears upon the
scene is the 'old peasant assembly. , * .' By means of the assembly
the peasants divide the appropriated goods, through the assembly
they conduct negotiations with the landlord and overseers, with
the county commissars and with punitive expeditions of all
kinds."

The question why the town committees, which have led the
peasants right up to the civil war, now disappear from the scene,
finds no direct answer in these materials* But the explanation
comas of itself. A revolution very quickly wears out its organs
and implements. Owing to the mere fact that the land committees
had been conducting semi-peaceful activities, they were bound to
seem of little use for direct assaults* And this general cause is
supplemented by particular ones no less weighty* In taking the
road of open war with the landlord, the peasants knew too well
what awaited them in case of defeat* A number of the land com-
mittees even without that were under Kerensky's lock and key.
To scatter the responsibility became a tactical need. The "mir"
offered the most expedient form for this* The customary mutual
mistrust of the peasants undoubtedly worked in the same direc*-
tion* It was a question now of the direct seizure and division of
the landlord's goods; each wanted to take part in this himself, not
entrusting his rights to anybody. Thus the highest tension of
the struggle led to a temporary retirement of the representative
organs In favor of primitive peasant democracy in the form of
the assembly and the communal decree.

This crude mistake in defining the character of the peasant
movement may seem especially surprising from the pen of Bol-
shevik investigators* But we must not forget that these are Bol-
sheviks of the new mould, The bureaucrataation of thought has
inevitably led to an overvaluing of those forms of organisation
which were imposed upon the peasants from above, an under-
valuing of those which the peasants themselves assumed. The
educated functionary, following the liberal professor, looks upon

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

social processes from the point of view of administration. In his
position as People's Commissar of Agriculture, Yakovlev subse-
quently showed the same summary bureaucratic mode of approach
to the peasantry, but in an infinitely broader and more responsible
sphere that namely of introducing "complete collectivization."
Theoretic superficiality takes a cruel reVenge when it comes to
practical action on a large scale!

But we are still a good thirteen years before the mistakes of
complete collectivization. It is now only a question of the ex-
propriation of the landed estates. One hundred thirty-four thou-
sand landlords are still trembling for their 1 8 million dessiatins.
Most threatened is the situation of those on the summit, the 30,000
lords of old Russia who own 70 million dessiatins over 2,000 on
the average per person. A lord, Boborykin, writes to the Chamber-
lain, Rodzianko: ct l am a landlord, and somehow it won't fit into
my head that I am to be deprived of my land, and that, too, for
a most improbable purpose for an experimental test of socialis-
tic teachings." But it is the task of revolution to accomplish just
those things which will not fit into the heads of the ruling class.

The more farsighted landlords cannot help realizing, how-
ever, that they will not be able to keep their estates. They are no
longer even trying to. The sooner we get rid of our land, they
are saying, the better. The Constituent Assembly presents itself
to them primarily as a vast clearing-house where the state will
recompense them not only for the land, but also for their
anxieties.

The peasant land-owners adhered to this program of theirs
on the left. They were not unwilling to have an end of the para-
sitical nobility, but they were afraid of unsettling the conception
of landed property. The state is rich enough, they declared at
their meetings, to pay the landlords something like 12 billion
rubles. In their quality of "peasants" they were counting on being
able to make use of these noble estates, once they had been paid
for by the people, on favorable terms.

The proprietors understood that the extent of the indemnity
was a political magnitude to be determined by the correlation of
forces at the moment of payment. Up to the end of August there
remained a hope that the Constituent Assembly, convoked & la

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Kornilov, would follow a line of agrarian reform midway be-
tween Rodfcianko and Miliukov, The collapse of Kornilov meant
that the possessing classes had lost the game.

During September and October the possessing classes were
awaiting the outcome as a hopelessly sick man awaits death.
Autumn with the mufchiks is the time for politics. The fields are
mowed, illusions are scattered, patience is exhausted, Time to
finish things up! The movement now overflows its banks, invades
all districts, wipes out local peculiarities! draws in all the strata
of the villages, washes away all considerations of law and prudence,
becomes aggressive, fierce, furious, a raging thing, arms itself
with steel and fire, revolvers and hand-grenades, demolishes and
burns up the manorial dwellings, drives out the landlords, cleanses
the earth and in some places waters it with blood*

Gone are the nests of the gentility celebrated by Pushkin,
Turgeniev and Tolstoi* The old Russia has gone up in smoke. The
liberal press is a collection of groans and outcries about the destruc-
tion of English gardens, of paintings from the brushes of serfs,
of patrimonial libraries, the parthenon* of Tornbov, the riding
horses, the ancient engravings, the breeding bulls. Bourgeois his-
torians have tried to put the responsibility upon the Bolsheviks
for the "vandalism** of the peasant's mode of settling accounts
with the "culture" of his lords* In reality the Russian muzhik was
completing a business entered upon many centuries before the
Bolsheviks appeared in the world* He was fulfilling his progres-
sive historic task with the only means at his disposal With revolu-
tionary barbarism he was wiping out the barbarism of the middle
ages* Moreover, neither he himself, nor his grandfather, nor his
great grandfather before him ever saw any mercy or indulgence!

When the feudal landlords got the best of the Jacquerie four
and a half centuries before the liberation of the French peasants,
a pious monk wrote in his chronicle: "They did so much evil to
the country that there was no need of the coming of the English
to destroy the kingdom; these never could have done what was
done by the nobles of France.** Only the bourgeoisie- m May
1871 proved able to exceed the French nobles in ferocity, The
Russian peasants thanks to the leadership of the workers, and
the Russian workers thanks to the support of the peasants,

THE PEASANTRY BEFORE OCTOBER

avoided learning this twofold lesson from the defenders of cul-
ture and humanity.

The inter-relations between the fundamental classes of Russia
at large were reproduced in the village. Just as the workers and
soldiers went into a fight with the monarchy contrary to the
plans of the bourgeoisie, so the peasant poor rose boldest of all
against the landlord, not heeding the warnings of the kulak. Just
as the Compromisers believed that the revolution would stand
firmly on its feet only from the moment it was recognized by
Miliukov, so the middle peasants, glancing round to right and
left, imagined that the signature of the kulak would legitimize
the seizures. And finally, somewhat as the bourgeoisie, although
hostile to the revolution, did not hesitate to appropriate the power,
so the kulaks, after resisting the raids, did not refuse to enjoy their
fruits. The power did not remain long in the hands of the bour-
geoisie, nor the landlord's chattels in the hands of the kulaks
for like reasons.

The strength of the agrarian-democratic and essentially bour-
geois revolution was manifested in the fact that it overcame for
a time the class contradictions of the village: the farm hand helped
the kulak in raiding the landlord. The 17th, 18th and 19th
centuries of Russian history climbed up on the shoulders of the
20th, and bent it to the ground. The weakness of this belated
bourgeois revolution was manifested in the fact that the peasant
war did not urge the bourgeois revolutionists forward, but threw
them back conclusively into the camp of reaction. Tseretelli, the
hard-labor convict of yesterday, defended the estates of the land-
lords against anarchy! The peasant revolution, thus rejected by
the bourgeoisie, joined hands with the industrial proletariat. In
this way the 20th century not only got free of those past cen-
turies hanging upon it, but climbed up on their shoulders to a
new historic level. In order that the peasant might clear and fence
his land, the worker had to stand at the head of the state: that is
the simplest formula for the October revolution.

CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

EiNGUAGE Is the most important instrument of human
communication, and consequently of industry. It becomes
national together with the triumph of commodity exchange
which integrates nations. Upon this foundation the national state
is erected as the most convenient, profitable and normal arena for
the play of capitalist relations. In Western Europe the epoch of
the formation of bourgeois nations, if you leave out the struggle
of the Netherlands for independence and the fate of the island
country, England, began with the great French revolution, and
was essentially completed approximately one hundred years later
with the formation of the German Empire,

But during that period when in Europe the national state could
no longer contain the productive forces and was overgrown into
the imperialist state, in the East in Persia, the Balkans, China,
India the era of national democratic revolutions* taking its im-
petus from the Russian revolution of 1?05 was only just be-
ginning. The Balkan war of 1912 marked the completion of the
forming of national states in southeastern Europe, The subsequent
imperialist war completed incidentally the unfinished work of
the national revolutions in Europe leading as it did to the dis-
memberment of Austria-Hungary, the establishment of an in-
dependent Poland* and of independent border states cut from the
empire of the tzars.

Russia was formed not as a national state, but as a state made
up of nationalities* This corresponded to its belated character. On
a foundation of extensive agriculture and home industry com-
mercial capital developed not deeply, not by transforming pro-
duction, but broadly, by increasing the radius of its operation.
The trader, the landlord and the government official advanced
from the center toward the periphery, following the peasant
settlers who, in search of fresh lands and freedom from imposts,

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

were penetrating new territory inhabited by still more backward
tribes. The expansion of the state was in its foundation an expan-
sion of agriculture, which with all its primitiveness showed a
certain superiority to that of the nomads in the south and east.
The bureaucratic-caste state which formed itself upon this enor-
mous and continually broadening basis, became sufficiently strong
to subjugate certain nations in the west, possessed of a higher cul-
ture but unable because of their small numbers or condition of
inner crisis to defend their independence (Poland, Lithuania, the
Baltic states, Finland) .

To the seventy million Great Russians constituting the main
mass of the country, there were gradually added about ninety
million "outlanders" sharply divided into two groups: the west-
ern peoples excelling Russia in their culture, and the eastern stand-
ing on a lower level. Thus was created an empire of whose popula-
tion the ruling nationality constituted only 43 per cent. The
remaining 57 per cent were nationalities of various degrees of
culture and subjection, including Ukrainians 17 per cent, Poles
6 per cent, white Russians 4 1 /2 per cent.

The greedy demands of the state and the meagerness of the
peasant foundation under the ruling classes gave rise to the most
bitter forms of exploitation. National oppression in Russia was
incomparably rougher than in the neighboring states not only
on its western but even on its eastern borders. The vast numbers
of these nationalities deprived of rights, and the sharpness of
their deprivation, gave to the national problem in tzarist Russia
a gigantic explosive force.

Whereas in nationally homogeneous states the bourgeois revo-
lutions developed powerful centripetal tendencies, rallying to the
idea of overcoming particularism, as in France, or overcoming
national disunion, as in Italy and Germany in nationally heter-
ogeneous states on the contrary, such as Turkey, Russia, Austria-
Hungary, the belated bourgeois revolution released centrifugal
forces. In spite of the apparent contrariness of these processes
when expressed in mechanical terms, their historic function was
the same. In both cases it was a question of using the national
unity as a fundamental industrial reservoir. Germany had for
this purpose to be united, Austria-Hungary to be divided.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Lenin early learned the Inevitability of this development of
centrifugal national movements in Russia, and for many years
stubbornly fought most particularly against Rosa Luxemburg
for that famous paragraph 9 of the old party program which
formulated the right of nations to self-determination that is,
to complete separation as states* In this the Bolshevik party did
not by any means undertake an evangel of separation. It merely
assumed an obligation to struggle implacably against every form
of national oppression, including the forcible retention of this
or that nationality within the boundaries of the general state.
Only in this way could the Russian proletariat gradually win the
confidence of the oppressed nationalities-

But that was only one side of the matter. The policy of Bol-
shevism in the national sphere had also another side, apparently
contradictory to the first but in reality supplementing it. Within
the framework of the party, and of the workers* organizations in
general, Bolshevism insisted upon a rigid centralism, implacably
warring against every taint of nationalism which might set the
workers one against the other or disunite them, While flatly re-
fusing to the bourgeois states the right to impose compulsory
citizenship, or even a state language, upon a national minority,
Bolshevism at the same time made it a verily sacred task to unite
as closely as possible, by means of voluntary class discipline, the
workers of different nationalities. Thus it flatly rejected the
national-federation principle in building the party* A revolu-
tionary organization is not the prototype of the future state, but
merely the instrument for its creation. An instrument ought to
be adapted to fashioning the product; it ought not to include the
product. Thus a centralized organization can guarantee the suc-
cess of a revolutionary struggleeven where the task is to destroy
the centralized oppression of nationalities.

For the oppressed nations of Russia the overthrow of the
monarchy inevitably meant also their own national revolution*
In this matter, however, we observe the same thing as in all other
departments of the February regime; the official democracy, held
in leash by its political dependence upon an imperialist bour-
geoisie, was totally incapable of breaking the old fetters. Holding
inviolable its right to settle the fate of all other nations, it con-

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

-^jg-^i-.j- j- j-u- jr ..jr JT- -J" JT- j-j-j- .j .11 -jr.J-_~_r^-_- -ir j- j _j-_- j- j- J~ j~ j- J~ -j~ _r _r ._jr _>r^<~-r-_r- jr f~ j ~ fr- ;~

tinued jealously to guard those sources of wealth, power and
influence which had given the Great Russian bourgeoisie its
dominant position. The compromisist democracy merely trans-
lated the traditions of the tzarist national policy into the language
of libertarian rhetoric: it was now a question of defending the
unity of the revolution. But the ruling coalition had also another
more pointed argument: wartime expediency. This meant that
the aspirations of individual nationalities toward freedom must
be portrayed as the work of the Austro-German General Staff.
Here too the Kadets played first violin and the Compromisers
second.

The new government could not, of course, leave absolutely un-
touched that disgusting legal tangle, the complicated medieval
mockeries of the outlanders. But it did hope and endeavor to stop
at a mere annulment of the exceptional laws against individual
nations that is, to establish a bare equality of all parts of the
population before the Great Russian state bureaucracy.

This formal equality gave most of all to the Jews, for the laws
limiting their rights had reached the number of 650. Moreover,
being city dwellers and the most scattered of all the nationalities,
the Jews could make no claim either to state independence or even
territorial autonomy. As to the project of a so-called "national-
cultural autonomy" which should unite the Jews throughout the
whole country around schools and other institutions, this reac-
tionary Utopia, borrowed by various Jewish groups from the
Austrian theoretician, Otto Bauer, melted in those first days of
freedom like wax under the sun's rays.

But a revolution is a revolution for the very reason that it is
not satisfied either with doles or deferred payments. The abolition
of the more shameful national limitations established a formal
equality of citizens regardless of their nationality, but this re-
vealed only the more sharply the unequal position of the nation-
alities as such, leaving the major part of them in the position of
jstep-children or foster-children of the Great Russian state.

The proclamation of equal rights meant nothing to the Finns
especially, for they did not desire equality with the Russians but
independence of Russia. It gave nothing to the Ukrainians, for
their rights had been equal before, they having been forcibly

THE TRIUMPH Of THE SOVIETS

proclaimed to be Russian. It changed nothing in the situation of
the Letts and Esthonians, oppressed by the German landlord's
manor and the Russo-Gcrman city* It did not lighten in the least
the fate of the backward peoples and tribes of Central Asia, who
had been held down to the rock bottom not by juridical limita-
tions, but by economic and cultural bail and chain, AH these ques-
tions the Liberal-Compromisist coalition refused even to bring
up, The democratic state remained the same old state of the Great
Russian functionary, who did not intend to yield his place to
anybody.

The deeper the revolution sank among the masses in the bor-
derlands, the more clear it became that the Russian state language
was there the language of the possessing classes* The regime of
formal democracy, with its freedom of press and assemblage,
made the backward and oppressed nationalities only the more
painfully aware to what extent they were deprived of the most
elementary means of cultural development: their own schools,
their own courts, their own officials* References to a future Con-
stituent Assembly only irritated them. They knew well enough
that the same party would dominate that assembly which had
created the Provisional Government, and was continuing to de-
fend the tradition of Russification, making clear with its jealous
greed that line beyond which the ruling classes would not go.

Finland became from the first a thorn in the flesh of the Feb-
ruary regime* Thanks to the bitterness of the agrarian problem,
in Finland a problem of "torpars" that is, small enslaved tenants
the industrial workers, although comprising only 14 per cent
of the population, carried the rural population with them. The
Finnish Seim was the only parliament in the world where the
social-democrats got a majority; 103 seats out of 200, Having by
their law of June 5 declared the Seim a sovereign power except
on questions of war and foreign policy, the Finnish social-
democrats appealed for support *'to the comrade party of Rus-
sia/* But their appeal, as it turned out, was sent quite to the wrong
address. The Provisional Government stepped aside at first, per-
mitting the "comrade party" to act* An advisory delegation
headed by Cheidze went to Helsingfors and returned empty-
handed* Theti the socialist ministers of Petrograd Kerensky,

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

Chernov, Skobelev, Tseretelli decided to dissolve by force the
socialist government at Helsingfors. The chief of the headquarters
staff, the monarchist Lukomsky, gave warning to the civil au-
thorities and the population of Finland that in case of any action
against the Russian army "their cities, and Helsingfors, first of
all, would be laid waste/' After this preparation, the Government
issued a solemn manifesto a plagiarism from the monarchy even
in its literary style dissolving the Seim. And on the first day
of the offensive they placed Russian soldiers withdrawn from the
front at the doors of the Finnish parliament. Thus the revolu-
tionary masses of Russia making their way to October got a
good lesson on the qualified place occupied by the principles of
democracy in a struggle of class forces.

Confronted by this unbridled nationalism of the ruling classes,
the revolutionary troops in Finland adopted a worthy attitude.
A regional congress of the Soviets held in Helsingfors early in
September announced: "If the Finnish democracy finds it ad-
visable to renew the sessions of the Seim, any attempt to hinder
this will be regarded by the soviet congress as a counter-
revolutionary act." That was a direct offer of military help. But
the Finnish democracy, in which compromisist tendencies pre-
dominated, was not ready to take the road of insurrection. New
elections, held under the threat of a new dissolution, gave a
majority of 180 out of 200 to those bourgeois parties in agree-
ment with whom the government had dissolved the Seim.

But here domestic questions come to the front, questions
which in this Switzerland of the North, a land of granite moun-
tains and greedy proprietors, would lead inexorably to civil war.
The Finnish bourgeoisie was half openly preparing its military
cadres. Secret nuclei of the Red Guard were forming at the same
time. The bourgeoisie turned to Sweden and Germany for weapons
and instructors. The workers found support in the Russian troops.
Meanwhile in bourgeois circles yesterday still inclined to agree-
ment with Petrograd a movement was developing for com-
plete separation from Russia. Their leading newspaper,
Khuvudstatsbladet, wrote: "The Russian people is possessed by
an anarchist frenzy. . . . Ought we not in these circumstances
... to separate ourselves as far as possible from that chaos?" The

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Provisional Government found itself obliged to make concessions
without awaiting the Constituent Assembly- On the 23rd of
October a decree was adopted recognizing "in principle** the
independence of Finland except in military and foreign affairs.
But "independence" given by the hand of Kerensky was not
worth much: it was now only two days before his fall.

A second and far more gigantic thorn in the flesh was the
Ukraine, Early in June, Kerensky forbade the holding of a
Ukrainian soldier-congress convoked by the Rada The Ukraini-
ans did not submit. In order to save the face of his government
Kerensky legalized the congress ex post facto* sending a declama-
tory telegram which the assembled deputies greeted with dis-
respectful laughter. This bitter lesson did not prevent Kerensky
from forbidding three weeks later a military congress of the
Mussulmans in Moscow. The democratic government seemed
anxious to make it plain to the discontented nations: you will get
only what you grab.

In its first "universal" issued on June 10th, the Rada, accusing
Petrograd of opposing national independence, declared; "Hence-
forth we will build our own life/' The Kadets denounced the
Ukrainian leaders as German agents; the Compromisers addressed
them with sentimental admonitions; the Provisional Government
sent a delegation to Kiev. In the heated atmosphere of the Ukraine,
Kerensky, Tseretelli and Tereschenko felt obliged to take a few
steps to meet the Rada. But after the July raids on workers and
soldiers, the Government veered right on the Ukrainian question
also* On August 5> the Rada by an overwhelming majority ac-
cused the government, "imbued with the imperialist tendencies
of the Russian bourgeoisie," of having broken the agreement of
July 3rd. "When the time came for the government to redeem its
pledge/* declared the head of the Ukrainian government,
Vmnichenko, "it turned out that the Provisional Government
* * . is a petty cheat, who hopes to get rid of a great historic
problem by swindling/* This unequivocal language conveys an
adequate idea of the authority of the government even in those
circles which ought politically to be rather close to it. For
in the long run the Ukrainian Compromiser, Vinnichenko, was

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

^^_i^j~_r_f~^~^r~f~-r^*-~r j-<j~^r^f--f~-f~~r^r~*-~f-^f JT ~f j~.jrjr-jr-~r~r~rjrjr -f -*~ -f jr jr jr ~r -T>Jr f jr <f *~ i~ **

distinguished from Kerensky only as a mediocre novelist from a
mediocre lawyer.

It is true that in September the government did finally issue
a decree recognizing for all the nationalities of Russia within
limits to be designated by the Constituent Assembly the "right
of self-determination." But this wholly unguaranteed and in-
wardly contradictory promise for the future extremely vague
in everything but its limitations inspired no confidence in any-
body. The doings of the Provisional Government were already
crying out too loudly against it.

On September 2nd the Senate that same body which refused
to admit new members without the old uniform decided to
deny publication to the instructions issued to the Ukrainian
General Secretariat that is, to the Ministerial Cabinet in Kiev
and confirmed by the Government. Justification: no law provides
for this Secretariat, and it is impossible to issue instructions to an
illegal institution. The lofty jurists did not conceal the fact,
either, that the very agreement entered into between the govern-
ment and the Rada was a usurpation of the rights of the Con-
stituent Assembly these tzarist senators having now become the
most inflexible partisans of pure democracy. In this show of cour-
age the oppositionists from the Right were risking nothing at all:
they knew that their opposition was quite after the heart of
the ruling classes. Although the Russian bourgeoisie had swal-
lowed a certain amount of independence for Finland united to
Russia as she was by weak economic ties it could not possibly
agree to an "autonomy" of Ukrainian grain, Donetz coal, and
the ores of Krivorog.

On October 19, Kerensky sent a telegraphic order to the Gen-
eral Secretary of the Ukraine "to come promptly to Petrograd
for personal explanations" in regard to a criminal agitation started
there in favor of a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly. At the same
time the District Attorney of Kiev was directed to begin an in-
vestigation of the Rada. But these threats gave as little fright to
the Ukraine as the acts of grace had given joy to Finland.

The Ukrainian Compromisers were at this time feeling in-
finitely more secure than their elder cousins in Petrograd. Aside

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

from the auspicious atmosphere surrounding their struggle for
national rights, the comparative stability of the petty bourgeois
parties in the Ukraine as also in a number of other oppressed
nations had economic and social roots descrihable in one word,
backwardness. In spite of the swift industrial development of the
Donetz and Krivorog Basins, the Ukraine as a whole continued to
lag behind Great Russia. The Ukrainian proletariat was less
homogeneous, less tempered* The Bolshevik party was weak both
in numbers and quality, had been slow in breaking away from the
Mensheviks, and was poorly versed in the political, and especially
the national situation. Even in the industrial eastern parts of the
Ukraine, a regional conference of the Soviets as late as the middle
of October showed a slight compromisist majority!

The Ukrainian bourgeoisie was comparatively still weaker*
One of the causes of the social instability of the Russian bour-
geoisie taken as a whole lay, we remember* in the fact that its
more powerful section consisted of foreigners not even dwelling
in Russia* In the borderlands this fact was supplemented by
another no less significant: their own domestic bourgeoisie
did not belong to the same nation as the principal mass of the
people.

The population of the cities in these borderlands was com-
pletely different in Its national ingredients from the population
of the country* In the Ukraine and White Russia the landlord,
capitalist* lawyer, journalist, was a Great Russian, a Pole, a Jew,
a foreigner; the rural population was wholly Ukrainian and
White Russian* In the Baltic states the cities were havens of the
German, Russian and Jewish bourgeoisie; the country was alto-
gether Lettish and Esthonian, In the cities of Georgia, a Russian
and Armenian population predominated, as also in Turkish Azer-
baidjan, being separated from the fundamental mass of the
people not only by their level of life and culture f but also by lan-
guage, as are the English in India* Being indebted for the pro-
tection of their possessions and income to the bureaucratic ma-
chine, and being closely bound up with the ruling classes of all
other countries, the landlords, industrialists and merchants in
these borderlands grouped around themselves a narrow circle of
Russian functionaries, clerks, teachers, physicians, lawyers, jour-

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

nalists, and to some extent workers also, converting the cities
into centers of Russification and colonization.

It was possible to ignore the villages so long as they remained
silent. When they began, however, more and more impatiently
to lift their voices, the city resisted and stubbornly continued to
resist, defending its privileged position. The functionary, the
merchant, the lawyer, soon learned to disguise his struggle to
retain the commanding heights of industry and culture under
the form of a top-lofty condemnation of an increasing "chau-
vinism." The desire of a ruling nation to maintain the status quo
frequently dresses up as a superiority to "nationalism," just as
the desire of a victorious nation to hang on to its booty easily
takes the form of pacifism. Thus MacDonald in the face of
Ghandi feels as though he were an internationalist. Thus too the
gravitation of the Austrians toward Germany appears to Poin-
care an offense against French pacifism.

"People living in the cities of the Ukraine"-r-so wrote a dele-
gation of the Rada to the Provisional Government in May
"see before them the Russified streets of these cities . . . and
completely forget that these cities are only little islets in the sea
of the whole Ukrainian people." "When Rosa Luxemburg, in her
posthumous polemic against the program of the October revolu-
tion, asserted that Ukrainian nationalism, having been formerly
a mere "amusement" of the commonplace petty bourgeois in-
telligentsia, had been artificially raised up by the yeast of the
Bolshevik formula of self-determination, she fell, notwithstand-
ing her luminous mind, into a very serious historic error. The
Ukrainian peasantry had not made national demands in the past
for the^ reason that the Ukrainian peasantry had not in general
risen to the height of political being. The chief service of the
February revolution perhaps its only service, but one amply suf-
ficient lay exactly in this, that it gave the oppressed classes and
nations of Russia at last an opportunity to speak out. This polit-
ical awakening of the peasantry could not have taken place other-
wise, however, than through their own native language with
all the consequences ensuing in regard to schools, courts, self-
administration. To oppose this would have been to try to drive
the peasants back into non-existence.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The difference in nationality between the cities and the vil-
lages was painfully felt also in the Soviets, they being predomi-
nantly city organizations. Under the leadership of the com-
promise parties the Soviets would frequently ignore the national
interests of the basic population. This was one cause of the weak-
ness of the Soviets in the Ukraine. The Soviets of Riga and Reval
forgot about the interests of the Letts and the Esthonians. The
compromisist soviet in Baku scorned the interests of the basic
Turcoman population. Under a false banner of internationalism
the Soviets would frequently wage a struggle against the de-
fensive nationalism of the Ukrainians or Mussulmans, supplying
a screen for the oppressive Russifying movement of the cities, A
little time after, under the rule of the Bolsheviks, the Soviets of
these borderlands began to speak the language of the villages.

Their general economic and cultural primitiveness did not
permit the Siberian outlanders kept down as they were both
by nature and exploitation to rise even to that level where na-
tional aspirations begin. Vodka, taxes and compulsory orthodoxy
were here from time immemorial the principal instruments of
statehood. That disease which the Italians called the French evil,
and the French, the Neapolitan, was called "Russian*' by the Si-
berian peoples. That shows from what sources came the seeds of
civilization. The February revolution did not reach that far. The
hunters and reindeer breeders of the polar wastes must still wait
long for their dawn.

The peoples and tribes along the Volga, in the northern Cau-
casus, in Central Asia awakened for the first time out of their
pre-historic existence by the February revolution had as yet
neither national bourgeoisie nor national proletariat. Above the
peasant or shepherd mass a thin layer had detached itself from
among their upper strata, constituting an intelligentsia. Not yet
rising to a program of national self-administration, the struggle
here was about matters like having their own alphabet, their own
teachers even at times their own priests. In these ways the most
oppressed were being compelled to learn in bitter experience that
the educated masters of the state would not voluntarily permit
them to rise in the world. The most backward of the backward
were thus compelled to seek the most revolutionary class as an

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

ally. Through the left elements of their young intelligentsia the
Votiaks, the Chuvashes, the Zyrians, the tribes of Daghestan and
Turkestan, began to find their way toward the Bolsheviks.

The fate of the colonial possessions, especially in central Asia,
would change together with the industrial evolution of the cen-
ter, passing from direct and open robbery, including trade rob-
bery, to those more disguised methods which converted the Asi-
atic peasants into suppliers of industrial raw material, chiefly
cotton. Hierarchically organized exploitation, combining the bar-
barity of capitalism with the barbarity of patriarchal life, suc-
cessfully held down the Asiatic peoples in extreme national abase-
ment. And here the February regime left everything as it was.

The best lands, seized under tzarism from the Bashkirs, Buri-
ats, Kirghiz, and other nomadic tribes, had continued in the
possession of the landlords and wealthy Russian peasants scat-
tered about in colonizing oases among the native population. The
awakening of a national spirit of independence here meant first
of all a struggle against these colonizers, who had created an arti-
ficial stripe system of land-ownership and condemned the no-
mads to hunger and gradual extinction. The colonizers, on their
side, furiously defended the unity of Russia that is, the sanctity
of their grabbings against the "separatism" of the Asiatics. The
hatred of the colonizers for the native movements assumed zo-
ological forms in the Transbaikal. Pogroms of the Buriats were in
full swing under the leadership of March Social Revolutionaries
recruited from village clerks and non-commissioned officers re-
turning from the front.

In their anxiety to preserve the old order as long as possible,
all the exploiters and violators in the colonized regions appealed
henceforth to the sovereign rights of the Constituent Assembly.
This phraseology was supplied them by the Provisional Govern-
ment, which had found here its surest bulwark. On the other
hand, the privileged upper circles of the oppressed peoples were
also calling more and more often on the name of the Constituent
Assembly. Even the Mussulman clergy who would lift above the
awakening mountain peoples and the tribes of the northern
Caucasus the green banner of the Shariat whenever a pressure
from below made their position difficult, were now postponing

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the question "until the Constituent Assembly." This became the
slogan of conservatism, of reaction, of special interest and privi-
lege all over the country. To appeal to the Constituent Assembly
meant to postpone and gain time. Postponement meant: assemble
your forces and strangle the revolution.

The leadership fell into the hands of the clergy or feudal gen-
try, however, only at first, only among the backward peoples
almost only among the Mussulmans. In general, the national
movement in the villages was headed as a matter of course by
rural teachers, village clerks, functionaries and officers of low
rank, and, to some extent, merchants. Alongside the Russian or
Russianized intelligentsia, composed of the more respectable and
well provided elements, there was formed in the borderland cities
another layer, a younger layer, closely bound up with its village
origin and lacking access to the banquet of capital, and this layer
naturally took upon itself the task of representing politically the
national, and in part also the social interests of the basic peasant
mass.

Although hostilely disposed to the Russian Compromisers
along the line of this national aspiration, these borderland Com-
promisers belonged to the same fundamental type, and even for
the most part went by the same name. The Ukrainian Social Rev-
olutionaries and social democrats, the Georgian and Lettish Men-
sheviks, the Lithuanian "Trudoviks," tried like their Great Rus-
sian namesakes to confine the revolution within the framework
of the bourgeois regime. But the extreme weakness of the native
bourgeoisie here compelled the Mensheviks and Social Revolu-
tionaries, instead of entering a coalition, to take the state power
into their own hands. Compelled to go farther on agrarian and
labor questions than the central government, these borderland
compromisers had also the great advantage of being able to ap-
pear before the army and the country as opponents of the coali-
tional Provisional Government. All this was sufficient, if not to
create different destinies for the Russian Compromisers and those
of the borderlands, at least to give a different tempo to their rise
and fall.

The Georgian social democrats not only led after them the
pauper peasantry of Little Georgia, but also laid claim and that

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

not without success to lead the movement of the "revolutionary
democracy" for all Russia. During the first months of the rev-
olution the heads of the Georgian intelligentsia regarded Georgia
not as a national fatherland, but as a Gironde a blessed southern
province called to provide leaders for the whole country. At the
Moscow State Conference one of the prominent Georgian Men-
sheviks, Chenkeli, boasted that the Georgians had always said
even under tzarism, in fair weather and foul: "A single father-
land, Russia." "What shall we say of the Georgian nation?" cried
this same Chenkeli a month later at the Democratic Conference.
"It is wholly at the service of the Great Russian revolution." And
it is quite true that the Georgian Compromisers, like the Jewish,
were always "at the service" of the great Russian bureaucracy
when it was necessary to moderate, or put brakes on the national
claims of individual regions.

This continued only so long, however, as the Georgian social
democrats still hoped to confine the revolution within the frame-
work of bourgeois democracy. In proportion as the danger ap-
peared of a victory of the masses led by Bolshevism, the Georgian
social democrats relaxed their ties with the Russian Compromisers
and united closely with the reactionary elements of Georgia itself.
The moment the Soviets were victorious, these Georgian partisans
of a single Russia became the trumpeters of separation, and
showed to the other peoples of Transcaucasia the yellow fangs of
their chauvinism.

This inevitable national disguise of social contradictions less
developed in the borderlands, anyway, as a general rule ade-
quately explains why the October revolution was destined to meet
more opposition in most of the oppressed nations than in Central
Russia. But, on the other hand, the conflict of nationalities by
its very nature cruelly shook the February regime and created
sufficiently favorable surroundings for the revolution in the
center.

In these circumstances the national antagonisms whenever
they coincided with class contradictions became especially hot.
The age-old hostility between the Lettish peasants and the Ger-
man barons impelled many thousands of laboring Letts to volun-
teer at the outbreak of the war. The sharp-shooting regiments of

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Lettish farm hands and peasants were among the best troops at
the front. As early as May, however, they had already come out
for a soviet government. Their nationalism was only the outer
shell of an immature Bolshevism. A like process took place in
Esthonia.

In White Russia, with its Polish or Polized landlords, its
Jewish population in the cities and small towns, and its Russian
officials, the twice and thrice oppressed peasantry had some time
before October, under the influence of the nearby front, poured
its national and social indignation into the channel of Bolshevism.
In the elections for the Constituent Assembly the overwhelming
mass of White Russians would cast its vote for the Bolsheviks.

All these processes in which an awakened national dignity
was linked up with social indignation, now holding it back, now
pushing it forward, found an extremely sharp expression in the
army. Here there was a veritable fever for creating national regi-
ments, and these were at one time patronized, at another tolerated,
at still another persecuted by the central government, according
to their attitude to the war and the Bolsheviks. But in general
they kept growing more and more hostile to Petrograd.

Lenin kept a firm hand on the "national" pulse of the revolu-
tion. In a famous article, "The Crisis Is Ripe," written toward the
end of September, he insistently pointed out that the National
curia of the Democratic Conference "had stood second in the
matter of radicalism, yielding only to the trade unions, and stand-
ing higher than the soviet curia in its percentage of votes against
the Coalition (40 out of 55)." This meant that the oppressed
peoples were no longer hoping for any benefit from the Great
Russian bourgeoisie. They were more and more trying to get their
rights by independent action, a bite at a time and in the form of
revolutionary seizures.

In an October congress of the Buriats in far off Verkh-
neyudinsk, a speaker declared that "the February revolution
introduced nothing new" in the position of the outlander. His
summing up of the situation made it seem necessary, if not yet
to take the side of the Bolsheviks, at least to observe an attitude of
more and more friendly neutrality toward them.

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

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An all-Ukrainian soldier-congress which met during the very
days of the Petrograd insurrection, adopted a resolution to strug-
gle against the transfer of power to the Ukrainian Soviet, but at
the same time refused to regard the insurrection of the Great
Russian Bolsheviks as an "anti-democratic action," and promised
to take all measures to prevent the soldiers being sent to put down
the insurrection. This equivocation which perfectly characterizes
the petty bourgeois stage of the national struggle, facilitated that
revolution of the proletariat which intended to put an end to all
equivocations.

On the other hand the bourgeois circles in the borderlands,
which had heretofore invariably and always gravitated toward
the central power, now launched into a separatism which in many
cases no longer had a shred of national foundation. The Baltic
bourgeoisie, which only yesterday had been following in a state
of hurrah-patriotism the German barons, the first bulwark of the
Romanovs, took its stand in the struggle against Bolshevik Russia
and its own masses, under the banner of separatism. Still more
curious phenomena appeared along this road. On the 20th of
October the foundations were laid for a new state formation,
"The Southeastern Union of Cossack Troops, Caucasian Moun-
taineers and Free Peoples of the Steppes." Here the leaders of the
Don, Kuban, Tyer and Astrakhan Cossacks, the chief bulwark of
imperial centralism, were transformed in the course of a few
months into passionate defenders of the federal principle, and
united on this ground with the leaders of the Mussulman moun-
taineers and steppe-dwellers. The boundaries of the federative
structure were to serve as a barrier against the Bolshevik danger
coming from the north. However, before creating the principal
drill ground for the civil war against the Bolsheviks, this counter-
revolutionary separatism went directly against the ruling coali-
tion, demoralizing and weakening it.

Thus the national problem, along with all others, showed the
Provisional Government a Medusa's head on which every hair of
the March and April hopes had changed into a snake of hate and
indignation.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

A further Note on the froblcm of Nationalities

The Bolshevik party did not by any means immediately after the
February revolution adopt that attitude on the national question which
in the long run guaranteed its victory. This was true not only in the
borderlands, with their weak and inexperienced party organizations, but
also in the Petrograd center. During the war the party had so weakened,
the theoretical and political level of its cadres had become so lowered,
that on the national question too its official leaders took an extremely
confused and half-way position until the arrival of Lenin.

To be sure, following their tradition, the Bolsheviks defended the
right of a nation to self-determination* But the Mensheviks also sub-
scribed to this formula in words. The text of the two programs re-
mained identical. It was the question of power which was decisive. And
the temporary leaders of the party proved wholly incapable of under-
standing the irreconcilable antagonism between the Bolshevik slogans on
the national, as well as the agrarian, question, and the preservation of
a bourgeois-imperialistic regime, even though disguised in democratic
forms.

The democratic position found its most crass expression from the pen
of Stalin. On March 25th, in an article dealing with a government de-
cree on the abolition of national limitations, Stalin tried to formulate
the national question on a historic scale. "The social basis of national op-
pression," he writes, "the power inspiring it, is a decaying land aristoc-
racy." The fact that national oppression developed unprecedcntedly
during the epoch of capitalism, and found its most barbaric expression
in colonial policies, seems to be beyond the ken of the democratic author.
"In England," he continues, "where the landed aristocracy shares the
power with the bourgeoisie, where the unlimited power of this aristoc-
racy long ago ceased to exist, national oppression is milder, less inhumane
leaving out of account, of course, the circumstance that during the
course of the war, when the power had gone over into the hands of the
landlords (!), national oppression was considerably strengthened (per-
secution of Ireland and India) ." Those guilty of oppressing Ireland and
India are the landlords, who evidently in the person of Lloyd George-
have seized the power thanks to the war. **. . . In Switzerland and
North America," continues Stalin, "where there is no landlordism and
never has been (!), where the power is undivided in the hands of the
bourgeoisie, nationalities have developed freely. National oppression,
generally speaking, finds no place. . , ." The author completely forgets

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

i^^-^~_r-^.j-^^jrjr^jr-*-^~i~jt~.^r--*~^^^^-^r^-r^-r-r~^-^j^^-^'~^~^^~r^-^r'-r~JF~~*' -f -*~ -*~ur~ i<r \f f f

the Negro, Indian, immigrant and colonial problems in the United
States.

From this hopelessly provincial analysis, which comes only to a con-
fused contrasting of feudalism with democracy, purely liberal political
inferences are drawn. "To remove the feudal aristocracy from the po-
litical scene, to snatch the power from it that is exactly the same
thing as to put an end to national oppression, to create the actual con-
ditions necessary for national freedom. Insofar as the Russian revolu-
tion has conquered," writes Stalin, "it has actually created these con-
ditions. ..." We have here perhaps a more principled apology for the
imperialistic "democracy" than all that has been written on this theme
by the Mensheviks. Just as in foreign policy Stalin, along with Kamenev,
hoped to achieve a democratic peace by means of a division of labor with
the Provisional Government, so in domestic policy he found in the
democracy of Prince Lvov the "actual conditions" of national freedom.

As a matter of fact the fall of the monarchy first fully exposed the
fact that not only the reactionary landlords, but also the whole liberal
bourgeoisie, and following after it the whole petty bourgeois democracy,
along with the patriotic upper crust of the working class, was impla-
cably hostile to a genuine equality of national rights that is to say, an
abolition of the privileges of the dominant nation. Their whole program
came down to a business of mitigation, of cultural sugar-coating, of
democratic concealment of the Great Russian ascendancy.

At the April conference, in defending Lenin's resolution on the
national question, Stalin formally starts from the thesis that "national
oppression is that system . . . those measures which are adopted by
the imperialistic circles." But he straightway and inevitably gets off the
track and goes back to his March position. "The more democratic a
country, the weaker its national oppression and vice versa." Such is the
speaker's own summary, and not the one he borrowed from Lenin. The
fact that democratic England is oppressing feudal and caste-ridden
India escapes, as before, from his limited field of vision. In distinction
from Russia* where "an old land aristocracy" has dominated continues
Stalin "in England and Austria-Hungary the national oppression has
never taken the form of pogroms." As though a land aristocracy
"never" dominated in England, and as though it does not dominate to
this day in Hungary! The combined character of historic development
which unites "democracy" with the strangling of weak nations, had
remained for Stalin a sealed book.

That Russia took form as a state made up of nationalities, is the
result of her historic belatedness. But belatedness is a complex con-
ception inevitably contradictory. The backward country does not fol-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

low in the tracks of the advanced, keeping the same distance. In an
epoch of world-wide economy the backward nations, becoming in-
volved under pressure from the advanced in the general chain of de-
velopment, skip over whole series of intermediate stages. Moreover the
absence of firmly established social forms and traditions makes the back-
ward country at least within certain limits extremely hospitable to
the last word in international technique and international thought.
Backwardness does not, however, for this reason cease to be backward-
ness. The whole development gets a contradictory and combined charac-
ter. A predominance of historic extremes is proper to the social struc-
ture of a belated nation predominance of the backward peasants and
the advanced proletarians over the intermediate formations of the
bourgeoisie. The tasks of one class are shouldered off upon another. In,
the national sphere also, the uprooting of medieval remnants falls to
the lot of the proletariat.

Nothing so clearly characterizes the historic belatedness of Russia
when considered as a European country, as the fact that in the twentieth
century she had to liquidate compulsory land rent and the pale those
twin barbarisms, serfdom and the Ghetto. But in performing these tasks
Russia, exactly because of her belated development, made use of new
and utterly modern classes, parties, programs. To make an end of the
ideas and methods of Rasputin, she required the ideas and methods of
Marx.

Political practice remained, of course, far more primitive than politi-
cal theory. For things are harder to change than ideas. But theory
nevertheless only carried the demands of practical action clear through.
In order to achieve liberation and a cultural lift, the oppressed nationali-
ties were compelled to link their fate with that of the working class.
And for this they had to free themselves from the leadership of their
own bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties they had to make a long
spurt forward, that is, on the road of historic development.

This subordination of the national movements to the fundamental
process of the revolution, the struggle of the proletariat for power, was
not accomplished at once, but in several stages and moreover dif-
ferently in different regions. The Ukrainian, "White Russian and Tartar
workers, peasants, and soldiers who were hostile to Kerensky, the war
and Russification, became thereby, in spite of their compromistet leader-
ship, allies of the proletarian insurrection. From being an objective sup-
port of the Bolsheviks, they became obliged at a farther stage to go
over consciously also to the Bolshevik road. In Finland, "Latvia and Es-
thonia, and more weakly in the Ukraine, the stratification of the na-
tional movement had taken such sharp forms by October, that only the

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

interference of foreign troops could prevent the success of the prole-
tarian revolution. In the Asiatic East, where the national awakening
was taking place in more primitive forms, it could only by degrees and
with a considerable lag come under the leadership of the proletariat
only, indeed, after the proletariat had conquered the power. If you take
this complicated and contradictory process as a whole, the conclusion
is obvious: the national current, like the agrarian, was pouring into the
channel of the October revolution.

The irrevocable and irresistible going over of the masses from the
most rudimentary tasks of political, agrarian and national emancipa-
tion and abolition of serfdom to the slogan of proletarian rulership, re-
sulted not from "demagogic" agitation, not from preconceived schemes,
not from the theory of Permanent Revolution, as the Liberals and Com-
promisers thought, but from the social structure of Russia and the con-
ditions of the world-wide situation. The theory of Permanent Revolu-
tion only formulated the combined process of this development.

It is a question here not of Russia alone. This subordination of be-
lated national revolutions to the revolution of the proletariat follows a
law which is valid throughout the world. Whereas in the nineteenth
century the fundamental problem of wars and revolutions was still
to guarantee a national market to the productive forces, the problem
of our century is to free the productive forces from the national
boundaries which have become iron fetters upon them. In the broad
historic sense the national revolutions of the East are only stages of the
world revolution of the proletariat, just as the national movements of
Russia became stepping stones to the soviet dictatorship.

Lenin appraised with admirable profundity the revolutionary force
inherent in the development of the oppressed nationalities, both in
tzarist Russia and throughout the world. That hypocritical "pacifism,**
which "condemns" in the same way the war of Japan against China
aiming at her enslavement, and the war of China against Japan in the
cause of her liberation, got nothing but scorn from Lenin. For him a
war of national liberation, in contrast to wars of imperialistic oppres-
sion, was merely another form of the national revolution which in its
turn enters as a necessary link in the liberating struggle of the inter-
national working class.

This appraisal of national wars and revolutions does not by any means
imply, however, that the bourgeoisie of the colonial and semi-colonial
nations have a revolutionary mission. On the contrary, this bourgeoisie
of backward countries from the days of its milk teeth grows up as an
agentry of foreign capital, and notwithstanding its envious hatred of
foreign capital, always does and always will in every decisive situation

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

turn up in the same camp with it. Chinese compradorism is the classic
form of the colonial bourgeoisie, and the Kuomintang is the classic party
of compradorism. The upper circles of the petty bourgeoisie, including
the intelligentsia, may take an active and occasionally a very noisy part
in the national struggles, but they are totally incapable of playing an
independent role. Only the working class standing at the head of the
nation can carry either a national or an agrarian revolution clear
through.

The fatal mistake of the Epigones, and above all Stalin, lies in this,
that from Lenin's teaching about the progressive historic significance
of the struggle of oppressed nations they have inferred a revolutionary
mission of the bourgeoisie of the colonial countries. A failure to under-
stand the permanent character of revolution in an imperialist epoch; a
pedantic schema tization of the course of development; a chopping up of
the living and combined process into dead stages imagined to be neces-
sarily separated in time all these errors have brought Stalin to a vulgar
idealization of democracy or a "democratic dictatorship," a thing which
can be nothing in reality but either an imperialist dictatorship or a
dictatorship of the proletariat. Step by step Stalin's groups have pro-
ceeded along this road to a complete break with the position of Lenin on
the national question, and to their catastrophic policy in China.

In August 1927, in conflict with the Opposition (Trotsky, Rakov-
sky, and others) Stalin said at a plenary session of the Central Com-
mittee of the Bolsheviks: "A revolution in imperialist countries is one
thing; there the bourgeoisie ... is counter-revolutionary at all stages
of the revolution. ... A revolution in colonial and dependent coun-
tries is something else . . . ; there the national bourgeoisie can at a
given stage and a given date support the revolutionary movement of
their country against imperialism."

"With side remarks and softenings due only to his lack of confidence
in himself, Stalin here transfers to the colonial bourgeoisie those same
traits with which he was adorning the Russian bourgeoisie in March.
Obedient to its deeply organic nature Stalin's opportunism finds its way
as though impelled fry some law of gravitation, through whatever chan-
nels always in the same direction. The choice of theoretic arguments be-
comes here a purely accidental matter.

From this transfer of his March appraisal of the Provisional Govern-
ment to the "national" government of China resulted Stalin's three-
year cooperation with the Kuomintang, a policy which led up to one of
the most shocking facts of modern history. In the capacity of loyal
armor-bearer, the Bolshevism of the Epigones accompanied the Chinese
bourgeoisie right up to April n, 1Wl the day of its bloody massacre

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

of the Shanghai proletariat. "The fundamental mistake of the Oppo-
sition" thus Stalin tried to justify his comradeship in arms with Chang
Kai Shek "lies in the fact that it identifies the revolution of 1905 in
Russia in an imperialist country oppressing other peoples, with the
revolution in China, an oppressed country. . . ." It is astonishing even
in Stalin that he has never thought of viewing the revolution in Russia,
not from the standpoint of the nation "oppressing other peoples," but
from the standpoint of the experience of these same "other peoples" of
Russia who have suffered no less oppression than the Chinese.

In that gigantic field of experience represented by Russia in the
course of her three revolutions, you can find every variant of national
and class struggle except one: that in which the bourgeoisie of any op-
pressed nation played a liberating role in relation to its own people. At
every stage of its development every borderland bourgeoisie, no matter in
what colors it might dance, was invariably dependent upon the central
banks, trusts, and commercial institutions which were in essence the
agents of all Russian capital. They subjected the bourgeoisie to the Rus-
sifying movement, and subjected to the bourgeoisie broad circles of the
liberal and democratic intelligentsia. The more "mature" a borderland
bourgeoisie might be, the more closely was it bound up with the general
state machine. Taken as a whole, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed na-
tion played the same role in relation to the ruling bourgeoisie that the
latter played in relation to international finance capital. The complex
hierarchy of antagonisms and dependencies did not remove for one
single day the fundamental solidarity of the three in the struggle against
the insurrectionary masses.

In the period of counter-revolution (190717), when the leader-
ship of the national movements was in the hands of the native bour-
geoisie, they were even more candid than the Russian liberals in seeking
a working agreement with the Russian monarchy. The Polish, Baltic,
Tartar, Ukrainian, Jewish bourgeoisie vied with each other in the display
of imperialist patriotism. After the February revolution they hid be-
hind the backs of the Kadets or, like the Kadets, behind the backs of
their own national Compromisers. The bourgeoisie of the border na-
tions entered the road of separatism in the autumn of 1917, not in a
struggle against national oppression, but in a struggle against the ad-
vancing proletarian revolution. In the sum total the bourgeoisie of the
oppressed nations manifested no less hostility to the revolution than the
Great Russian bourgeoisie.

This gigantic historic lesson of three revolutions has left not a trace,
however, in the minds of many of those who took part in the events
notably in the mind of Stalin. The compromisist that is, petty hour-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

geois conception of the correlation of classes within colonial nations,
that conception which killed the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, has
even been introduced by the Epigones into the program of the Com-
munist International, converting this program in that section into a
mere trap for the oppressed peoples of the East.

IN ORDER to understand the real character of Lenin's policy on the
national question, it is a good idea following the method of contrasts
to compare it with the policy of the Austrian social democrats.
Bolshevism based itself upon the assumption of an outbreak of national
revolutions continuing for decades to come, and instructed the ad-
vanced workers in this spirit. The Austrian social democracy, on the
contrary, submissively accommodated itself to the policy of the ruling
classes; it defended the compulsory co-citizenship of ten nations in
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and at the same time, being abso-
lutely incapable of achieving a revolutionary union of the workers of
these different nationalities, fenced them off in the party and in the
trade unions with vertical partitions. Karl Renner, an educated Haps-
burg functionary, was never tired of probing the inkwells of Austro-
Marxism in search of some means of rejuvenating the rule of the
Hapsburgs until one day he found himself the bereaved theoretician
of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. "When the Central Empires were
crushed, the Hapsburg dynasty again tried to raise the banner of a
federation of autonomous nations under its sceptre, The official pro-
gram of the Austrian social democracy, based as it was upon the
assumption of a peaceful development within the frame-work of the
monarchy, now became in one second the program of the monarchy
itself, covered with the bloody filth of its four years of war. But that
rusty hoop which had bound ten nations together flew to pieces. Austria-
Hungary fell apart as a result of internal centrifugal tendencies rein-
forced by the surgery of Versailles. New states were formed, and the
old ones reconstructed. The Austrian Germans hung over an abyss. Their
problem was no longer to preserve their dominance over other nations,
but to avoid falling themselves under a foreign yoke. And Otto Bauer,
representing the "left" wing of the Austrian social democracy, con-
sidered this a suitable moment to bring forward the formula of national
self-determination. That program which during the preceding decades
should have inspired the struggle of the proletariat against the Haps-
burgs and the ruling bourgeoisie, was now brought in as an instrument
of self-preservation for the nation which had dominated yesterday, but
today was in danger from the side of the liberated Slavic peoples. Just as
the reformist program of the Austrian social democracy had become in.

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

the wink of an eye the straw at which a drowning monarchy tried to
grab, so the formula of self-determination, emasculated by these Austro-
Marxists, was now to become the anchor of salvation for the German
bourgeoisie.

On October 3, 1918, when the matter no longer depended on them
in the slightest degree, the social democratic deputies of the reichsrath
magnanimously "recognized" the right of the peoples of the former
empire to self-determination. On October 4th, the bourgeois parties also
adopted the program of self-determination. Having thus outstripped the
Austro-German imperialists by one day, the social democrats immedi-
ately resumed their waiting policy, it being still imcertain what turn
things would take and what Wilson was going to say. Only on the 13th
of October, when the conclusive collapse of the army and the monarchy
had created in the words of Otto Bauer "the revolutionary situation
for which our national program was designed," did the Austro-Marxists
raise the question of self-determination in a practical form. In very
truth they had now nothing to lose. "With the collapse of its rulership
over other nations," explains Bauer quite frankly, "the German national
bourgeoisie considered at an end that historic mission in whose cause
it had voluntarily suffered a separation from the German fatherland."
Thus the new program was put in circulation not because it was needful
to the oppressed, but because it had ceased to be dangerous to the op-
pressors. The possessing classes, driven into a tight place historically,
had found themselves obliged to recognize the national revolution
juridically, and Austro-Marxism found this an appropriate moment to
legitimize it theoretically. This was a mature revolution, they said,
timely, historically prepared it is all over anyway. The spirit of the
social democracy is here before us as though in the palm of the hand!

It was quite otherwise with the social revolution, which could not
hope for any recognition from the possessing classes. This had to be
postponed, compromised, robbed of glory. Since the empire had split up
along the weakest, that is the national, seams, Otto Bauer drew the
following conclusion as to the character of the revolution: "It was by
no means a social, but a national revolution." In reality the movement
had had from the very beginning a deep social-revolutionary content.
Its "purely national" character is fairly well illustrated by the fact that
the possessing classes of Austria openly invited the Entente to take
prisoner the whole army. The German bourgeoisie beseeched the Italian
general to seize Vienna with Italian troops!

This vulgar and pedantic separation of national form from social
content in the revolutionary process, as though they constituted two
independent historic stages we see here how closely Otto Bauer ap-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

preaches Stalin! had an extremely utilitarian destination. Its purpose
was to justify the collaboration of the social democracy with the bour-
geoisie in its struggle against the danger of social revolution.

If you adopt the formula of Marx that revolution is the locomotive
of history, then Austro-Marxism occupies the position of the brake.
Even after the actual collapse of the monarchy, the social democracy,
called to participate in the government, was still unable to make up its
mind to a rupture with the old Hapsburg ministry. The "national" revo-
lution limited itself to reinforcing the old ministers with state secre-
taries. Only after October 9th, when the German revolution had thrown
out the Hohenzollerns, did the Austrian social democrats propose to the
State Council that they proclaim a republic, frightening their bourgeois
partners into it with the movement of the masses at which they were
already themselves quaking to the marrow of their bones. "The Chris-
tian Socialists,'* says Otto Bauer with imprudent irony, "who on the
9th and 10th of November were still on the side of the monarchy, de-
cided on November llth to cease their resistance. . . /* For two whole
days the social democrats were in advance of this party of the Black
Hundred Monarchy! All the heroic legends of humanity grow pale be-
fore this revolutionary audacity.

Against its will the Austrian social democracy took its place auto-
matically from the beginning of the revolution at the head of the na-
tion, just as had the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.
Like them too it feared above all things its own power. In the coalition
government the social democrats tried to occupy just as small a place
as possible. Otto Bauer explains this as follows: "The fact that the
social democrats at first demanded only a modest participation in the
government corresponded primarily to the purely national character of
the revolution." The question of power was decided by those people not
on a basis of the real correlation of forces, the might of the revolutionary
movement, the bankruptcy of the ruling classes, the political influence
of the party, but by a pedantic little label "purely national revolution"
pasted by some wiseacre classifiers upon the actual course of events,

Karl Renner waited out the storm in the position of head secretary of
the State Council. The other social democratic leaders converted them-
selves into assistants of the bourgeois ministers. In other words, the
social democrats hid under the office tables. The masses, however, were
not satisfied to feed on the national shell of that nut whose social meat
the Austro-Marxists were saving up for the bourgeoisie. The workers
and soldiers shoved out the bourgeois ministers and compelled the social
democrats to come out of hiding. The irreplaceable theoretician, Otto
Bauer, explains this also: "Only the events of the following days, driv-

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITIES

ing the national revolution over to the side of social revolution, increased
our weight in the government." To translate this into intelligible lan-
guage: under the assault of the masses, the social democrats were com-
pelled to crawl out from under the tables.

But this did not change their function for a moment. They took the
power, but only to start a war against romanticism and adventurism,
with which titles these sycophants now designated that same social
revolution which had "increased their weight in the government." If
these Austro-Marxists successfully fulfilled in 1918 their historic mis-
sion as guardian angels protecting the Vienna Kreditanstalt from the
revolutionary romanticism of the proletariat, it is only because they
met no obstacle from the side of a genuine revolutionary party.

The two states composed of nationalities, Russia and Austria-
Hungary, have with their most recent fate set a seal upon the difference
between Bolshevism and Austro-Marxism. Throughout a decade and a
half Lenin, in implacable conflict with all shades of Great Russian
chauvinism, preached the right of all oppressed nations to cut away from
the empire of the tzars. The Bolsheviks were accused of aspiring toward
the dismemberment of Russia, but this bold revolutionary formulation
of the national problem won for the Bolshevik party the indestructible
confidence of the small and oppressed peoples of tzarist Russia. In April
1917 Lenin said: "If the Ukrainians see that we have a soviet republic
they will not cut away, but if we have a Miliukov republic they will." In
this he proved right. History has provided an incomparable checkup of
the two policies on the national question. Whereas Austria-Hungary,
whose proletariat was educated in the spirit of a cowardly halfway
policy, went all to pieces under a formidable shake-up, and moreover the
initiative in this process was taken in the main by the national sections
of the social democratic party, in Russia on the ruins of tzarism a new
state composed of nationalities has been formed, and has been closely
welded together both economically and politically by the Bolshevik
party.

Whatever may be the further destiny of the Soviet Union and it is
still far from a quiet haven the national policy of Lenin will find its
place among the eternal treasures of mankind.

CHAPTER III

WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PRE-PARLIAMENT AND
STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

EVERY additional day of war was disintegrating the front,
weakening the government, damaging the international
position of the country. At the beginning of October the
German fleets, both naval and air, developed active operations in
the Gulf of Finland. The Baltic sailors fought courageously try-
ing to protect the road to Petrograd. But they, more clearly and
profoundly than, any other unit of the front, understood the deep
contradiction in their position as vanguards of a revolution and
involuntary participants in an imperialist war, and through the
radio stations on their ships they sent out a cry to the four cor-
ners of the horizon for international revolutionary help. "At-
tacked by superior German forces our fleet will go down in
unequal battle. Not one of our ships will decline the fight. The
slandered and maligned fleet will do its duty . . . but not at the
command of a miserable Russian Bonaparte, ruling by the long-
suffering patience of the revolution . . . not in the name of the
treaties of our rulers with the Allies, binding in chains the hands
of Russian freedom. . . ." No, but in the name of the defense of
the approaches to the hearth-fire of the revolution, Petrograd.
"In the hour when the waves of the Baltic are stained with the
blood of our brothers, while the waters are closing over their
bodies, we raise our voice: . . . Oppressed people of the whole
world! Lift the banner of revolt!"

These words about battles and victims were not empty. The
squadron had lost the ship Slava and retired after fighting. The
Germans had captured the Moon-sund Archipelago. One more
black page in the book of the war had been turned. The govern-
ment decided to use this new military blow as a pretext for mov-
ing the capital. This old idea swam out at every suitable oppor-
tunity. It was not that the ruling circles had any particular
affection f gr Moscow, but they hated Petrograd. The monarchist

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

reaction, the liberals, the democracy all strove in turn to demote
the capital, to bring it to its knees, to beat it down. The most
extreme patriots were now hating Petrograd with a far more
bitter hatred than they felt for Berlin.

The question of evacuating the capital was taken up as a
thing to be accomplished in extraordinary haste. Only two weeks
were allotted for the transfer of the government together with
the Pre-Parliament. It was also decided to evacuate in the brief-
est possible time the factories working for the defense. The Cen-
tral Executive Committee as a "private institution" would have
to look out for itself.

The Kadet instigators of the plan understood that a mere
transfer of the government would not settle their problem, but
they counted on afterward capturing the seat of revolutionary
infection with hunger, disease and exhaustion. An internal block-
ade of Petrograd was already in full swing. The factories were
being deprived of orders; the supply of fuel had been cut down
three-quarters; the ministry of provisions was holding up cattle
on their way to the capital; freight movements on the Mariinsky
Railroad System had been stopped.

The warlike Rodzianko, president of that State Duma which
the government had at last dissolved at the beginning of October,
spoke quite frankly in the liberal Moscow newspaper Utro Rossii
about the military danger threatening the capital. "I say to my-
self, God help her, God help Petrograd. ... A fear was ex-
pressed in Petersburg lest the central institutions (that is the
Soviets, etc.) will be destroyed. To this I answered that I would be
very glad if those institutions were destroyed, for they have
brought nothing whatever but evil to Russia." To be sure, with
the capture of Petrograd the Baltic fleet also would have been
destroyed, but against that too Rodzianko had no complaint:
"The ships there are completely depraved." Thanks to the fact
that the Lord Chamberlain could not keep his tongue behind his
teeth, the people had this chance to find out the most intimate
thoughts of noble and bourgeois Russia.

The Russian charge d'affaires reported from London that the
British naval headquarters, in spite of all urgings, did not consider
it possible to relieve the situation of its Ally in the Baltic. It was

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

not the Bolsheviks alone who interpreted this answer to mean that
the Allies, in common with the patriotic upper circles of Russia
herself, looked only for benefits to the common cause from a Ger-
man blow at Petrograd. The workers and soldiers had no doubt
especially after Rodzianko's confession that the government
was consciously getting ready to send them to school to Luden-
dorflf and Hoffmann.

On the 6th of October the soldiers' section adopted with a
unanimity hitherto unknown the resolution introduced by Trot-
sky: "If the Provisional Government is incapable of defending
Petrograd, it must either make peace or give place to another
government." The workers were no less irreconcilable. They con-
sidered Petrograd their fortress. Their revolutionary hopes were
bound up with her. They did not intend to surrender Petrograd.
Frightened by the military danger, the evacuation, the indigna-
ation of the soldiers and workers, the excitement of the whole
population, the Compromisers, on their side, sounded an alarm:
We must not abandon Petrograd to the caprice of fate. Convinced
that an attempted evacuation would meet resistance from all
sides, the government began to draw back; We were not troubled
so much, you know, about our own safety as about the question
of a meeting-place for the future Constituent Assembly. But this
position, too, they could not maintain. In less than a week the
government was compelled to announce that it not only intended
to remain in the Winter Palace itself, but proposed as before to
convoke the Constituent Assembly in the Tauridc Palace, This
announcement changed nothing in the military and political
situation. But it revealed once more the political power of Petro-
grad, which considered itself called to put an end to the govern-
ment of Kerensky, and would not let that government escape
from its walls. It was only the Bolsheviks who subsequently dared
transfer the capital to Moscow. They carried this out without the
slightest difficulty because for them it was really a strategic move.
They could not have any political reason for flying from
Petrograd. J 5

That contrite declaration about the defense of the capital
was made by the government upon the demand of the compro-
misist majority of a commission of the Council of the Russian Re-

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

public or "Pre-Parliament." This wonderful institution had at
last succeeded in getting born. Plekhanov, who loved jokes and
knew how to make them, disrespectfully named this impotent
and ephemeral Council of the Republic "the little house on
chicken's feet." I Politically this definition is not at all inaccurate.
It is only necessary to add that for a little house the Pre-
Parliament put up a pretty good front: the magnificent Mariin-
sky Palace, which had formerly sheltered the State Council of
Ministers, was placed at its disposal. The contrast between this
elegant palace and Smolny Institute, run-down and saturated
with soldier smells, made a great impression upon Sukhanov:
"Amid all this magnificence," he confesses, "one wanted to rest,
to forget about labor and struggle, about hunger and war, about
ruin and anarchy, about the country and the revolution." But
there was very little time left for rest and forgetfulness.

The so-called "democratic" majority of the Pre-Parliament
consisted of 308 men: 120 Social Revolutionaries, among them
about 20 Lefts, 60 Mensheviks of various shades, 66 Bolsheviks;
after that came the Cooperators, the delegates of the peasant ex-
ecutive committee, etc. The possessing classes were accorded 156
seats, of which the Kadets occupied almost half. Together with
the Cooperators, the Cossacks, and the rather conservative mem-
bers of Kerensky's Executive Committee, the Right Wing on a
number of questions came near being a majority. The distribution
of seats in that comfortable little house on chicken's feet was thus
in flagrant contradiction to all decisive expressions of the will of
the people that had been made either in city or country. More-
over, in opposition to the dull gray representation to be found in
the Soviets and elsewhere, the Mariinsky Palace assembled within
its walls the "flower of the nation." Inasmuch as the members of
the Pre-Parliament did not depend upon the accidents of elective
competition, upon local influences and provincial preferences,
each social group and each party sent its most eminent leaders.
The personnel was, to quote Sukhanov, "extraordinarily bril-
liant." When the Pre-Parliament assembled for its first session, a
weight was lifted, says Miliukov, from the hearts of many
sceptics: "It will be fine if the Constituent Assembly is no worse

allusion is to a Russian fairy-story. Trans.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

than this." The flower of the nation looked upon itself in the
palace mirrors with great satisfaction and neglected to notice that
it was incapable of bearing fruit.

In opening this Council of the Republic on October 7, Keren-
sky did not forego the opportunity to remark that although the
government possessed "all the fullness of power," it was neverthe-
less ready to listen to "any genuinely valuable suggestion." Al-
though absolute, that is to say, the government had not ceased to
be cultivated. In the presidium, which consisted of five members
with Avksentiev as president, one place was offered to the Bolshe-
viks: It remained unoccupied. The directors of this pitiful and
unhappy comedy felt sick at heart. The entire interest of its gray
opening on a gray rainy day was centered upon the forthcoming
action of the Bolsheviks. In the couloirs of the Mariinsky Palace,
according to Sukhanov, a "sensational rumor** was in the air:
"Trotsky has won by a majority of two or three votes * . and
the Bolsheviks are going to withdraw at once from the Pre-
Parliament." In reality the decision to withdraw demonstratively
from the Mariinsky Palace was adopted on the 5th at a meeting
of the Bolshevik faction by all votes except one. So great had been
the shift leftward during the preceding two weeks! Only
Kamenev remained true to his original position or rather he
alone dared defend it. In a special declaration addressed to the
Central Committee, Kamenev candidly described the course
adopted as "very dangerous for the party." The doubt about the
intentions of the Bolsheviks caused a certain anxiety in the Pre-
Parliament. It was not so much a breakdown of the regime that
they feared, as a "scandal" before the eyes of the Allied diplomats,
whom the majority had just greeted with an appropriate volley
of patriotic applause. Sukhanov relates how they despatched an
official personage Avksentiev himself to the Bolsheviks to in-
quire in advance: What is going to happen? "A mere nothing,"
answered Trotsky, "a mere nothing, a little shot from a pistol."
After the opening of the session, upon the basis of rules of order
taken over from the State Duma, Trotsky was offered ten minutes
for a special announcement in the name of the Bolshevik faction.
A tense silence reigned in the hall. The declaration began by stat-
ing that the government was at present just as irresponsible as it

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

had been before the Democratic Conference, which was supposed
to have been convoked for the curbing of Kerensky, and that the
representatives of the possessing classes were present in this pro-
visional council in numbers to which they had not the slightest
right. If the bourgeoisie were really preparing for a Constituent
Assembly to meet in a month and a half , their leaders would have
no reason to defend so fiercely at the present time the irresponsi-
bility of the government even to this doctored representation.
"The essence of it all is that the bourgeois classes have decided to
quash the Constituent Assembly." The blow was well aimed, and
the Right Wing protested the more noisily. Without departing
from the text of the declaration the speaker denounced the in-
dustrial, agrarian and food policy. It would be impossible to adopt
any other policy, even if you set yourself the conscious aim of im-
pelling the masses to insurrection. "The idea of surrendering the
revolutionary capital to the German troops ... we accept as a
natural link in a general policy designed to promote ... a
counter-revolutionary conspiracy." The protest here turned into
a storm. Cries about Berlin, about German gold, about the sealed
train and on this general background, like pieces of broken
bottle in the mud, foul-mouthed abuse. Nothing like it was ever
heard during the most passionate conflicts in Smolny, dirty and
run-down and spat all over by soldiers as it was. ""We only have
to get into the good society of Mariinsky Palace," writes
Sukhanov, "in order to revive at once that atmosphere of the
low-class saloon which prevailed in the State Duma with its re-
stricted franchise."

Picking his way through these explosions of hatred alternat-
ing with moments of hush, the speaker concluded: "No, the Bol-
shevik faction announce that with this government of treason to
the people and with this Council of counter-revolutionary con-
nivance we have nothing whatever in common. ... In with-
drawing from the provisional council we summon the workers,
soldiers and peasants of all Russia to be on their guard, and to be
courageous. Petrograd is in danger! The revolution is in danger!
The people are in danger! . . . We address ourselves to the peo-
ple. All power to the Soviets!" As the orator descended from the
tribune the few score of Bolsheviks left the hall accompanied by

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

curses. After their moment of alarm the majority heaved a happy
sigh of relief. Only the Bolshevik's went out. The flower of the
nation remained at their posts. The Left Wing of the Com-
promisers bent a little under a blow not directed, it seemed, at
themselves. "We, the nearest neighbors of the Bolsheviks," con-
fesses Sukhanov, <e sat there completely appalled by all that had
happened." These immaculate Knights of the word were sensing
the fact that the time for words had passed.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tereshchenko, informed the
Russian ambassadors about the opening of the Prc-Parliamcnt in
a secret telegram: "The first session passed off uneventfully with
the exception of a scandal created by the Bolsheviks.'* The his-
toric break between the proletariat and the state mechanism of
the bourgeoisie was conceived by those people as a mere "scandal."
The bourgeois press did not miss the opportunity to goad the
government by references to the resoluteness of the Bolsheviks:
The honorable ministers will only then lead the country out^of
anarchy when they "acquire as much resolution and will to action
as is to be found in Comrade Trotsky." As though it were a ques-
tion of resolution and the will of individual people and not of
the historic destiny of classes! And as though the sorting out of
people and characters goes on independently of historic tasks.
"They spoke and acted," wrote Miliukov on the subject of the
Bolshevik withdrawal from the Pre-Parliament, "like people feel-
ing a power behind them, knowing that the morrow belonged to
them."

The loss of the Moon-sund Islands, the growing danger to
Petrograd, and the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from the Pre-
Parliament into the street, compelled the Compromisers to take
thought for the further development of the war. After a three-
day discussion participated in by the Minister of War and Navy,
and the commissars and delegates of the army organizations, the
Central Executive Committee came at last to a saving decision:
"To insist that representatives of the Russian democracy be ad-
mitted to the Paris Conference of the Allies." After renewed
efforts they named Skobelev as delegate. Detailed instructions
were drawn up: Peace without annexations or indemnities; neu-
tralization of straits and canals, including the Suez and Panama

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

Canals the Compromisers had a wider outlook geographically
than politically; abolition of secret diplomacy; gradual dis-
armament. The Central Executive Committee explained that the
aim of its delegate in the Paris Conference was "to bring pressure
to bear upon the Allies." Pressure of Skobelev upon France, Great
Britain and the United States! The Kadet paper put a poisonous
question: "What will Skobelev do if the Allies unceremoniously
reject his conditions? "Will he threaten them with another appeal
to the people of the whole world?" The Compromisers, alas, had
long been blushing for that old appeal of theirs.

While intending to force upon the United States the neutral-
ization of the Panama Canal, the Central Executive Committee
proved incapable in actual fact of bringing pressure to bear even
upon the "Winter Palace. On the 12th, Kerensky sent Lloyd George
a voluminous letter full of gentle reproaches, sorrowful com-
plaints, and fervent promises. The front, he said, is "in better
condition than it was last spring." Of course the defeatist
propaganda thus the Russian premier complains to a Britisher
against the Russian Bolsheviks has hindered the carrying out of
all the plans indicated. But there can be no talk of peace. The
government knows only one question: "How to continue the
war!" It goes without saying that as an earnest of his patriotism
Kerensky begged for credits.

Having got rid of the Bolsheviks, the Pre-Parliament also lost
no time in taking up the war. On the 10th the debate opened on
improving the fighting capacity of the army. The dialogue, which
occupied three weary sessions, developed according to one in-
variable scheme. "We must convince the army that it is fighting
for peace and democracy, said the Left. We must not convince
but compel, answered the Right. You have nothing to compel
with; in order to compel you must first at least partially con-
vince, answered the Compromisers. In the matter of convincing
the Bolsheviks are stronger than you, answered the Kadets. Both
sides were right. But a drowning man is also right when he lets
out a yell before going down.

On the 18th came that decisive hour which in the nature of
things nothing in the world could alter. The formula of the
Social Revolutionaries got 95 votes against 127, with 50 abstain-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

ing. The formula of the Right got 1 3 5 votes against 139. Astonish-
ing! There was no majority! Throughout the hall, according to
the newspaper accounts, there was general movement and con-
fusion. In spite of its unity of aim, the flower of the nation proved
incapable of adopting even a platonic decision upon the most
urgent question of the national life. This was no accident. The
same thing was being repeated day by day in the commissions and
in the plenary sessions upon all other questions. The fragments
of opinion could not be put together. All the groups were living
on illusive shadings of political thought: thought itself was ab-
sent. Maybe it had gone out into the street with the Bolsheviks?
. . . The blind alley of the Pre-Parliament was the blind alley of
the whole regime.

To reconvince the army was difficult, but to compel it was
also impossible. To a new shout from Kerensky at the Baltic fleet,
which had just been through a battle and lost victims, a congress
of the sailors addressed to the Central Executive Committee a
demand that they remove from the staff of the Provisional Gov-
ernment "a person who is disgracing and destroying the great
revolution with his shameless political chantage," It was the
first time Kerensky had heard such language from the sailors. The
Regional Committee of the Army, Fleet and Russian Workers in
Finland, functioning as a sovereign power, held up the govern-
ment freight. Kerensky threatened the soviet commissars with
arrest. The answer was: The Regional Committee tranquilly ac-
cepts the challenge of the Provisional Government* Kerensky
made no reply. In essence the Baltic fleet was already in a state of
insurrection. On the land front, things had not yet gone so far,
but they were traveling in the same direction. The food situation
was rapidly deteriorating throughout October. The commander-
in-chief of the northern front reported that hunger "is the chief
cause of the moral disintegration of the army/' At the same time
that the compromisist upper circles on the front were continuing
to assert to be sure, now only behind the backs of the soldiers
that the fighting capacity of the army was improving, the
lower ranks, regiment after regiment, were putting forth de-
mands for a publication of the secret treaties and an immediate
offer of peace. The commissar of the western front, Zhdanov,

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

reported during the first days of October: "The mood is extremely
alarming, taken in connection with the nearness of cold weather
and the deterioration of the food . . . The Bolsheviks are scor-
ing a definite success."

The governmental institutions at the front were hanging in
the air. The commissar of the Second Army reported that the
military courts could not function because the soldier-witnesses
refused to appear and testify. "The mutual relations between the
commanding staff and the soldiers is embittered. The officers are
blamed for dragging out the war." The hostility of the soldiers
to the government and the commanding staff had long ago been
transferred also to the army committees, which had not been
renewed since the beginning of the revolution. Over the heads
of the committees the regiments were sending delegates to Petro-
grad, to the Soviet, to complain of the intolerable situation in the
trenches, where they lived without bread, without clothing,
without faith in the war. On the Rumanian front, where the
Bolsheviks were very weak, whole regiments were refusing to
shoot. "In two or three weeks the soldiers themselves will declare
an armistice and lay down their arms." The delegates from one
of the divisions reported: "With the coming of the first snow the
soldiers have decided to go home." The delegates of the 133rd
army corps made this threat at a plenary session of the Petrograd
Soviet: "If there is not a real struggle for peace, the soldiers them-
selves will take the power and declare an armistice." The com-
missar of the Second Army reported to the War Minister: "There
is no little talk to the eifect that with the arrival of cold weather
they will abandon their position."

Fraternizing, which had almost stopped since the July days,
began again and grew rapidly. Instances not only of the arrest
of officers by the soldiers, but of the murder of the more hateful
began to multiply. These things were done almost publicly, be-
fore the eyes of the soldiers. Nobody interfered: the majority
did not want to, the small minority did not dare. The murderer
always succeeded in hiding: he was drowned and lost in the
soldier mass. One of the generals wrote: "We convulsively grasp
at this or that, we pray for some sort of miracle, but the majority
of us understand that there is already no hope of salvation."

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Mixing cunning with stupidity, the patriotic papers continued
to write about a continuation of the war, about an offensive and
about victory. The generals shook their heads; some of them
equivocally joined in. "Only completely crazy people," wrote
Baron Budberg, the commander of a corps near Dvinsk, on the
7th of October, "could dream about an offensive at the present
time." The very next day he was compelled to write in the same
diary: "Startled and appalled to receive orders for an offensive
not later than October 20th." Headquarters, believing in nothing
and shrugging its shoulders at everything, was drawing up plans
for a new operation. There were not a few generals who saw the
last hope of salvation in a repetition on a grand scale of Kornilov's
experiment with Riga: Drag the army into battle and try to bring
down a defeat on the head of the revolution*

On the initiative of "War Minister Verkhovsky it was decided
to transfer the oldest classes into the reserve. The railroad groaned
under the burden of these returning soldiers. In the overloaded
cars the springs broke and the floors fell through. This did not
improve the mood of those left behind. "The trenches are break-
ing down," writes Budberg. "The communication trenches are
flooded; there is refuse and excrement everywhere . . . The sol-
diers flatly refuse to work at cleaning up the trenches ... It
is dreadful to think where this will lead when spring comes and
all this begins to rot and decompose." In a state of embittered in-
action the soldiers refused in droves even to undergo preventive
inoculation. This too became a form of struggle against the war.

After vain efforts to raise the fighting capacity of the army
by decreasing its numbers, Verkhovsky suddenly came to thd
conclusion that only peace could save the country* At a private
conference with the Kadet leaders, whom this young and naive
minister imagined he could bring over to his side, Verkhovsky
drew a picture of the material and spiritual collapse of the army:
w Any attempt to prolong the war can only bring on a catastrophe/*
The Kadets could not understand this. But while the others re-
mained silent Miliukov scornfully shrugged his shoulders: "The
honor of Russia," "loyalty to the Allies" . , . Not believing in
one of these words, the leader of the bourgeoisie was stubbornly
striving to bury the revolution under the ruins and piles of

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

^f-^r-j-j-^g- _*-_*- _f j- _-_*- j-ij- j~ _j~_^-^_^j-^~_i-_i- j~ j~ j-.j- j~ -j~ j~ j^j-j^-~~r~ ~*~ j~ j^ j~ j- J~-T- j-^*->-*~<-r ijr if .<*"

corpses that would be left by the war. Verkhovsky revealed a
certain amount of political audacity. Without informing or warn-
ing the government, he appeared on the 20th before the com-
mission of the Pre-Parliament and announced the necessity of
an immediate peace with or without the consent of the Allies.
He was furiously attacked by all those who agreed with him in
private conversations. The patriotic press wrote that the war
minister "had jumped on the footboard of Comrade Trotsky's
chariot." Burtsev hinted at the presence of German gold. Verk-
hovsky was sent away on a vacation. In heart to heart conversa-
tions the patriots were saying: In essence he is right. Budberg had
to speak cautiously even in his diary: "From the point of view of
keeping our word," he wrote, "the proposal of course is tricky.
But from the standpoint of the egoistic interests of Russia, it is
perhaps the only one which offers hope of a saving way out.*'
Incidentally the baron confessed his envy of the German generals
to whom "fate has given the good luck to be the authors of vic-
tories." He did not foresee that the turn of the German generals
would come next. Those people never foresaw anything, even the
cleverest of them. The Bolsheviks foresaw much and that was
their strength.

The withdrawal from the Pre-Parliament in the eyes of the
people burned the last bridges uniting the party of insurrection
with official society. With renewed energy for the nearness of
the goal redoubles one's strength the Bolsheviks carried on their
agitation, an agitation called demagogism by the enemy because
it brought out into the public square what they themselves were
hiding in the chancellories and private offices. The convincingness
of this tireless evangel grew out of the fact that the Bolsheviks
understood the course of the objective development, subjected
their policy to it, were not afraid of the masses, and inconquer-
ably believed in their own truth and their victory. The people
never tired of hearing them. The masses felt a need to stand
close together. Each wanted to test himself through others, and
all tensely and attentively kept observing how one and the same
thought would develop in their various minds with its different
shades and features. Unnumbered crowds of people stood about
the circuses and other big buildings where the more popular

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Bolsheviks would address them with the last arguments and the
last appeals.

The number of leading agitators had greatly decreased by
October. First of all Lenin was lacking both as an agitator and
still more as an immediate day-to-day inspiration. His simple and
deep generalizations which could so lastingly insert themselves
into the consciousness of the masses, his clear sayings caught up
from the people and handed back to them, were sadly missed.
The first-class agitator Zinoviev was lacking. Having hidden
from prosecution under an indictment for "insurrection" in July,
he decisively turned against the October insurrection, and thus
for the whole critical period withdrew from the field of action.
Kamenev, the irreplaceable propagandist, the experienced po-
litical instructor of the party, condemned the policy of insurrec-
tion, did not believe in the victory, saw catastrophes ahead and
gloomily retired into the shadows, Sverdlov, by nature an or-
ganizer rather than an agitator, appeared often at mass meetings
and his even, powerful and tireless bass voice inspired tranquil
confidence. Stalin was neither agitator nor orator. He never ap-
peared as a spokesman at party conferences. But did he appear so
much as once in the mass meetings of the revolution? In the docu-
ments and memoirs no record of it has been preserved.

A brilliant agitation was conducted by Volodarsky, Lashevich,
Kollontai, Chudnovsky, and after them by scores of agitators of
lesser caliber. People listened with interest and sympathy and
the mature also with a certain condescension to Lunacharsky,
a skilled orator who knew how to present fact and generalization
and pathos and joke, but who did not pretend to lead anybody.
He himself needed to be led. In proportion as the revolution ap-
proached, Lunacharsky faded rapidly and lost his colorful effects,

Sukhanov says of the president of the Petrograd Soviet: x
"Tearing himself from the work in revolutionary headquarters
he would fly from the Obukhovsky factory to the Trubocheny,
from the Putilov to the Baltic shipyards, from the Riding Acad
emy to the barracks, and seemed to be speaking simultaneously
in all places. Every Petersburg worker and soldier knew him and
heard him personally. His influence both in the masses and in

1 Trotsky. Trans.

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

headquarters was overwhelming. He was the central figure of
those days, and the chief hero of this remarkable page of history."

But incomparably more effective in that last period before
the insurrection was the molecular agitation carried on by name-
less workers, sailors, soldiers, winning converts one by one, break-
ing down the last doubts, overcoming the last hesitations. Those
months of feverish political life had created innumerable cadres
in the lower ranks, had educated hundreds and thousands of
rough diamonds, who were accustomed to look on politics from
below and not above, and for that very reason estimated facts
and people with a keenness not always accessible to orators of the
academic type. The Petersburg workers stood in the front rank
hereditary proletarians who had produced a race of agitators
and organizers of extraordinary revolutionary temper and high
political culture, independent in thought, word and action. Car-
penters, fitters, blacksmiths, teachers of the unions and factories,
each already had around him his school, his pupils, the future
builders of the Republic of Soviets. The Baltic sailors, close com-
rades in arms of the Petersburg workers to a considerable ex-
tent issued from their midst put forward a brigade of agitators
who took by storm the backward regiments, the county towns,
the villages of the muzhiks, A generalizing formula tossed out in
the Cirque Moderne by one of the revolutionary leaders would
take flesh and blood in hundreds of thinking heads, and so make
the rounds of the whole country.

From the Baltic states, from Poland and Lithuania, thousands
of revolutionary workers and soldiers had been evacuated during
the retreat of the Russian armies, coming with the industrial
enterprises or one by one. All these became agitators against the
war and those guilty of it. The Lettish Bolsheviks, torn away from
their home soil and wholeheartedly standing on the soil of the
revolution, convinced, stubborn, resolute, were carrying on day
by day and all day long a mining operation in all parts of the
country. Their angular faces, harsh accent, and often their
broken Russian phrases, gave special expressiveness to an un-
ceasing summons to insurrection.

The mass would no longer endure in its midst the wavering,
the dubious, the neutral. It was striving to get hold of everybody,

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

to attract, to convince, to conquer. The factories joined with the
regiments in sending delegates to the front. The trenches got into
connection with the workers and peasants nearby in the rear. In
the towns along the front there was an endless series of meet-
ings, conferences, consultations in which the soldiers and sailors
would bring their activity into accord with that of the workers
and peasants. It was in this manner that the backward White
Russian front was won over to Bolshevism.

In places where the local party leadership was irresolute and
disposed to wait, as for example in Kiev, Voronezh, and many
other points, the masses not unfrequently fell into a passive con-
dition. To justify their policy, the leaders would point to this
mood of depression which they themselves had created* On the
other hand: "The more resolute and bold was his summons to
insurrection," writes Povohhsky, one of the Kazan agitators,
"the more trustful and hearty would be the attitude of the sol-
dier mass toward the speaker."

The factories and regiments of Petrograd and Moscow were
now more insistently knocking at the wooden gates of the vil-
lages. The workers would join together in sending delegates into
their native provinces. The regiments would pass resolutions
summoning the peasants to support the Bolsheviks. The workers
in factories within the cities would make pilgrimages to the sur-
rounding villages, distributing newspapers and laying the founda-
tions of Bolshevik nuclei. From these rounds they would come
back bringing in the pupils of their eyes a reflection from the
flames of the peasant war.

Bolshevism took possession of the country. The Bolsheviks
became an inconquerable power. The people were with them. The
city dumas of Kronstadt, Tzaritzyn, Kostroma, Shuia, elected
on a universal franchise, were wholly in the hands of the Bol-
sheviks. The Bolsheviks received 52 per cent of the votes at an
election to the district dumas of Moscow. In far-off and tranquil
Tomsk, as also in the wholly non-industrial Samara, the Bolshe-
viks dominated in the duma. Out of four members of the Schlus-
selberg county zemstvo, three were Bolsheviks. In the Ligovsky
county zemstvo, the Bolsheviks got JO per cent of the votes. It
was not so favorable everywhere, but everywhere it was chang-

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

ing in the same direction. The relative weight of the Bolshevik
party was on the rapid rise.

The Bolshevization of the masses revealed itself far more
clearly, however, in the class organizations. The trade unions
in the capital comprised over a half million workers. The Menshe-
viks themselves, who still had the administration of certain
unions, felt that they were a relic of past days. No matter what
parts of the proletariat might form an organization, and no mat-
ter what its immediate aim might be, it would inevitably arrive
at Bolshevik conclusions. And this was no accident: The trade
unions, the factory committees, the economic and cultural as-
semblies of the working class, both permanent and transitory,
were compelled by the whole situation, upon every private prob-
lem which might arise, to raise one and the same question: Who
is the master of the house?

The workers of the artillery factories, being called together
in conference to regulate their relations with the administration,
decided that they could best regulate them through a soviet
government. This was no longer a mere formula, but a program
of economic salvation. As they approached the power the workers
also approached more and more concretely the problems of in-
dustry. The artillery conference even established a special center
for the study of methods of transition from munition factories
to peaceful production.

The Moscow conference of factory and shop committees
declared that the local soviet should in the future decide all strike
conflicts by decree, on its own authority open the plants shut
down by the lockouts, and by sending its own delegates to
Siberia and the Donetz Basin guarantee coal and grain to the
factories. The Petrograd conference of factory and shop com-
mittees devoted its attention to the agrarian question, and upon a
report by Trotsky drew up a manifesto to the peasants: The
proletariat feels itself to be not only a special class, but also the
leader of the people.

The Ail-Russian conference of factory and shop committees,
meeting during the second half of October, raised the question
of workers' control to the position of a national problem: "The
workers are more interested than the owners in the correct and

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

uninterrupted operation of the plants." Workers* control "is in
the interest of the whole country and ought to be supported by
the revolutionary peasantry and the revolutionary army," This
resolution, opening the door to a new economic order, was adopted
by the representatives of all the industrial enterprises of Russia
with only five votes opposing and nine abstaining from the vote.
The few individual abstainers were old Mensheviks no longer
able to follow their own party, but still lacking courage to raise
their hands openly for the Bolshevik revolution. Tomorrow they
will do it.

The democratic municipal governments, only recently cre-
ated, were dying away along with the organs of the governmental
power. The most important tasks, such as guaranteeing water,
light, fuel and food to the cities, were all falling more and more
upon the Soviets and other workers' organizations. The factory
committee of the lighting station of Petrograd was rushing about
the city and the surroundings hunting up at one time coal, at
another grease for the turbines, and getting them both through
committees of other plants acting in opposition to their owners
and the administration.

No, the government of the Soviets was not a chimera, an
arbitrary construction, an invention of party theoreticians. It
grew up irresistibly from below, from the breakdown of in-
dustry, the impotence of the possessors, the needs of the masses.
The Soviets had in actual fact become a government. For the
workers, soldiers and peasants there remained no other road. No
time left to argue and speculate about a soviet government; it
had to be realized.

At the first congress of the Soviets, in June, it had been de-
cided to call the congress every three months. The Central Execu-
tive Committee, however, had not only failed to call the second
conference on time, but had shown a disposition not to call it at
all, in order to avoid confronting a hostile majority. The chief
task of the Democratic Conference had been to crowd out the
Soviets, replacing them with organs of the "democracy." But
that had not been so easy. The Soviets did not intend to make
way for anybody.

On September 21, at the close of the Democratic Conference,

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

_jr .jr^rj- -r^r-f- -i~-r- ^r-*--*~j-i^rjr^^--r-^r~r^-^r^i-^r^r~r^r~r^-^r-f~-rj~-*r~f~:jr'jri^~-r -J~ ~f~ -f~ -*~ <~ " *~ '~ <~ ~

the Petrograd Soviet raised its voice for the prompt calling of a
congress of the Soviets. A resolution in this sense was adopted
upon the report of Trotsky and a guest from Moscow, Bukharin,
formally based on the necessity of getting ready for "a new wave
of counter-revolution." Their plan for a defensive which should
lay down the road to the coming offensive relied upon the Soviets
as the sole organizations capable of making the struggle. The
resolution demanded that the Soviets strengthen their position
among the masses. Where the de facto power is already in their
hands, they are in no case to let it slip. The revolutionary com-
mittees created in the Kornilov days must remain ready for
action. "In order to unite and coordinate the action of all the
Soviets in their struggle with the advancing danger, and in order
to decide problems of organization of the revolutionary power,
the immediate calling of a congress of the Soviets is necessary."
Thus a resolution on self-defense brings us right up to the neces-
sity of overthrowing the government. The agitation will be con-
ducted on this political key-note from now straight on to the
moment of insurrection.

The delegates from the Soviets to the Democratic Conference
raised the question of a Soviet Congress before the Central
Executive Committee the next day. The Bolsheviks demanded
that the congress be called within two weeks, and proposed, or
rather threatened, to create for this purpose a special body rest-
ing on the Petersburg and Moscow Soviets. In reality they pre-
ferred to have the Congress called by the old Central Executive
Committee. This would obviate quarrels about the juridical rights
of the congress, and make it possible to overthrow the Com-
promisers with their own cooperation. The semi-camouflaged
threat of the Bolsheviks was effective. Not yet risking a break
with soviet legality, the leaders of the Central Executive Com-
mittee declared that they would entrust to nobody the fulfillment
of their duties. The Congress was called for October 20 within
less than a month.

The provincial delegates had no more than departed, how-
ever, when the leaders of the Central Executive Committee sud-
denly opened their eyes to the fact that the Congress would be
untimely it would withdraw local party workers from the elec-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

toral campaign, and thus do harm to the Constituent Assembly.
Their real fear was that the Congress would prove a mighty
pretender to the power, but about this they kept a diplomatic
silence. On the 26th of September Dan made haste to introduce
into the bureau of the Central Executive Committee, without
bothering about the necessary preparation, a proposal to post-
pone the congress.

With the elementary principles of democracy these patent
medicine democrats were least of all concerned. They had just
got through quashing the resolution of a Democratic Conference,
which they themselves had summoned, rejecting a coalition with
the Kadets. And now they revealed their sovereign contempt for
the Soviets, beginning with the Petrograd Soviet upon whose
shoulders they had been lifted into their seats. After all, how
could they, without abandoning their league with the bourgeoisie,
pay any attention to the hopes and demands of those tens of mil-
lions of workers, soldiers, and peasants who stood for the Soviets?

Trotsky answered the proposal of Dan by stating that the
Congress would be called just the same, if not constitutionally,
then by revolutionary means. The usually so submissive bureau
refused this time to follow along the road of a soviet coup d*$tat.
But this little defeat was far from compelling the conspirators to
lay down their arms. On the contrary it seemed to egg them on.
Dan found an influential support in the military section of the
Central Executive Committee, which decided to "query'* the
organizations of the front as to whether a congress should be
called or not that is, whether they should carry out a decision
twice adopted by the highest soviet body. In the interval the
compromise press opened a campaign against the congress. In
this the Social Revolutionaries were particularly furious* "Shall
a congress be summoned or not?" wrote Dyelo Naroda. "It can
have nothing to say in solution of the question of power . . .
The government of Kerensky will not submit in any case." To
what will it not submit? asked Lenin. "To the power of the
Soviets, to the power of the workers and peasants, which Dyelo
Naroda, in order to keep up with the pogrom-makers and anti-
semites, the monarchists and Kadets, calls the power of Trotsky
and Lenin."

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

The peasant Executive Committee, in its turn, declared the
calling of the Congress "dangerous and undesirable." A confusion
of ill-will thus prevailed in the soviet upper-circles. Delegates
of the compromise parties traveling over the country mobilized
the local organizations against a Congress which had been of-
ficially called by the supreme soviet body. The official organ of
the Central Executive Committee printed from day to day resolu-
tions against the Congress adopted at the bidding of the leading
Compromisers, inspired entirely by the old March ghosts wear-
ing, to be sure, very imposing names. Izvestia buried the Soviets
in a leading article, declaring them temporary barricades which
should be removed as soon as the Constituent Assembly crowns
the "edifice of the new structure."

The Bolsheviks least of all were caught napping by this agita-
tion against the Congress. On the 24th of September the Central
Committee of the party, without banking upon any action by
the Central Executive Committee, had decided to set in motion
from below, through the local Soviets and organizations of the
front, a campaign for the congress. The Bolsheviks delegated
Sverdlov to sit in the Central Executive Committee's official
commission on the calling or rather the sabotage of the con-
gress. Under his leadership the local organizations of the party
were mobilized, and through them also the Soviets. On the 27th
all the revolutionary institutions of Reval demanded that the
Pre-Parliarnent be immediately dissolved, and a conference of
the Soviets for the formation of a government immediately called;
they moreover solemnly promised to support it "with all the
forces and instrumentalities to be found in the fortress." Many
local Soviets, beginning with the districts of Moscow, proposed
that the function of summoning the congress be withdrawn from
the hands of the disloyal Central Executive Committee. Against
the resolutions of the army committees opposing the Congress
demands for its convocation flowed in from battalions, regiments,
corps and local garrisons. "The Congress of Soviets must seize
the power and stop at nothing," says a mass meeting of soldiers
in Kyshtin in the Urals. The soldiers of Novgorod province sum-
moned the peasants to take part in the Congress, and pay no at-
tention to the resolution of the peasants' Executive Committee.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Provincial Soviets, county Soviets these, too, in the farthest cor-
ners of the country factories, mines, regiments, dreadnoughts,
destroyers, war hospitals, meetings, an automobile detachment in
Petrograd, an ambulance squad in Moscow all were demanding
the removal of the government and the transfer of power to the
Soviets.

Not content with this agitational campaign, the Bolsheviks
created an important organizational base by calling a congress
of the Soviets of the northern region consisting of 150 delegates
from 23 points. That was a well-calculated blow! The Central
Executive Committee under the leadership of its great masters
in small affairs declared this northern congress a private con-
ference. The handful of Menshevik delegates refused to take
part in the work of the congress, remaining only **for purposes
of information." As though that could diminish by a tittle the
significance of a congress in which were represented the Soviets
of Petrograd and its suburbs, Moscow, Kronstadt, Helsingfors,
and Reval that is to say, both capitals, the naval fortresses, the
Baltic fleet and the garrisons surrounding Petrograd* The con-
gress, opened by Antonov to whom a military tint was being
intentionally given took place under the presidency of Ensign
Krylenko, the best agitator of the party at the front, the future
Bolshevik commander-in-chief. At the center of the political
report, made by Trotsky, stood the question of the new attempt
of the government to remove the revolutionary regiments from
Petrograd: The congress will not permit "the disarming of Petro-
grad and strangling of the Soviet." The question of the Petrograd
garrison is an element in the fundamental problem of power,
"The whole people is voting for the Bolsheviks; the people are
trusting us and authorizing us to seize the power." The resolu-
tion proposed by Trotsky read: "The hour has come when the
question of the central government . . . can be decided only by
a resolute and unanimous coming-out of all the Soviets/* This
almost undisguised summons to insurrection was adopted by all
votes with three abstaining.

Lashevich urged the other Soviets to follow Petrograd's ex-
ample and get control of the local garrisons. The Lettish delegate,
Peterson, promised forty thousand Lettish sharp-shooters for the

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

defense of the congress of Soviets. This announcement of Peter-
son, rapturously greeted, was no empty phrase. Only a few days
later the soviet of the Lettish regiments announced: "Only a
popular insurrection . . . will make possible the transfer of
power to the Soviets/' On the 13th the radio stations of the war-
ships broadcast throughout the whole country the summons of the
northern congress to prepare for an All-Russian Congress of
Soviets. "Soldiers, sailors, peasants, workers! It is your duty to
overcome all obstacles ..."

The Central Committee of the party suggested to the Bolshe-
vik delegates of the northern congress that in view of the ap-
proaching congress of the Soviets they should not leave Petrograd.
Individual delegates, at the direction of a bureau elected by the
congress, went to the army organizations and the local Soviets to
make reports in other words, to prepare the province for in-
surrection. The Central Executive Committee saw a powerful
apparatus grown up beside itself, resting upon Petrograd and
Moscow, conversing with the country through the radio stations
on the dreadnoughts, and ready at any moment to replace the
decrepit supreme soviet organ in the matter of summoning the
congress. Petty organizational tricks could be of no help to the
Compromisers here.

This struggle for and against the congress gave the last im-
pulse in the localities to the Bolshevization of the Soviets. In a
number of backward provinces, Smolensk for example, the Bol-
sheviks, either alone or together with the Left Social Revolution-
aries, got their first majority only during this campaign for the
congress or during the election of delegates to it. Even in the
Siberian congress of the Soviets the Bolsheviks succeeded in the
middle of October in creating with the Left Social Revolution-
aries a permanent majority which easily placed its imprint upon
the local Soviets. On the 15th the soviet of Kiev, by 159 votes
against 28, with 3 abstaining, recognized the coming Congress
of Soviets as <e the sovereign organ of power." On the 16th the
Congress of Soviets of the northwestern region at Minsk that
is, in the center of the western front declared the calling of
the Congress unpostponable. On the 18th the Petrograd Soviet
held elections for the coming Congress: 443 votes were cast for

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the Bolshevik list (Trotsky, Kamenev, Volodarsky, Yurcnev and
Lashevich) ; for the Social Revolutionaries 1 62 these all Left
Social Revolutionaries, tending toward the Bolsheviks; for the
Mensheviks 44. Under the presidency of Krestinsky a Congress of
the Soviets of the Urals, where 80 out of the 110 delegates were
Bolsheviks, demanded in the name of 223,900 organized workers
and soldiers that the Congress of Soviets be called at the appointed
date. On the same day, the 19th, an All-Russian conference of
factory and shop committees, the most direct and indubitable
representation of the proletariat in the whole country, came out
for an immediate transfer of power to the Soviets. On the 20th
Ivanovo-Voznesensk declared all the Soviets of the province to be
"in a state of open and ruthless struggle against the Provisional
Government," and summoned them to solve independently the
industrial and administrative problems of their localities. Against
this resolution, which meant the overthrow of local governmental
authorities, only one voice was raised, with one abstaining. On
the 22nd, the Bolshevik press published a new list of J organiza-
tions demanding a transfer of power to the Soviets. These were
all composed of the authentic masses of the people, and to a con-
siderable degree armed masses.

This all-powerful muster-roll of the detachments of the com-
ing revolution did not prevent Dan from reporting to the bureau
of the Central Executive Committee that out of 917 existing
soviet organizations, only 50 had responded with an agreement
to send delegates, and these had done so "without any enthusiasm."
It is easy enough to understand that those few Soviets who still
considered it necessary to report their feelings to the Central
Executive Committee regarded the congress without enthusiasm.
An overwhelming majority of the local Soviets and the army com-
mittees had simply ignored the Central Executive Committee
altogether.

Although they had exposed and compromised themselves
with these efforts to sabotage the congress, the Compromisers did
not dare carry the work through to the end. When it became
utterly obvious that they could not avoid a congress, they made
an abrupt about-face and summoned all the local organizations
to elect delegates to the congress in order not to give the Bolshe-

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

^^~^_r^^r<.^^^-^^-^^<^^^r~r^^^-r^*--rf^^^^r~^^r-r^r<-j'~-r~r-r~r~* T -r-rJ-J~~l~-f~*~'\~ ** ** '

viks a majority. Having waked up to the situation too late, how-
ever, the Central Executive Committee found itself obliged only
two or three days before the appointed date to postpone the
Congress to October 25.

Thanks to this last maneuver of the Compromisers, the Feb-
ruary regime, and bourgeois society along with it, received an
unexpected period of grace from which, however, it was no
longer capable of deriving any substantial benefits. The Bolshe-
viks, moreover, employed these five supplementary days to great
advantage. The enemy acknowledged this later on. "The post-
ponement of the coming-out," says Miliukov, "was made use of
by the Bolsheviks, first of all to reinforce their position among
the Petersburg workers and soldiers. Trotsky appeared at meet-
ings in the various units of the Petrograd garrison. The mood
created by him is exemplified in the fact that in the Semenovsky
regiment the members of the Executive Committee appearing
after him, Skobelev and Gotz, were not allowed to speak/'

This turning of the Semenovsky regiment, whose name had
been written in letters of ill omen in the history of the revolution,
had a kind of symbolic significance. In December, 1905, it was
the Semenovtsi who did the chief work of crushing the insurrec-
tion in Moscow. The commander of the regiment, General Min,
gave the order: "Take no prisoners." On the Moscow-Golutvino
railroad section the Semenovtsi shot 150 workers and clerks.
General Min, flattered by the tzar for his heroic deed, was killed
in the autumn of 1906 by a Social Revolutionary woman,
Konopliannikova. Tangled up in these old traditions the Semen-
ovsky regiment had held its ground longer than the majority of
the units of the guard. Its reputation for "reliability" was so
strong, that in spite of the doleful failure of Skobelev and Gotz,
the government stubbornly continued to count upon the Semen-
ovtsi right up to the day of the insurrection and even after it.

The question of the congress of the Soviets remained the cen-
tral political question throughout the five weeks dividing the
Democratic Conference from the October insurrection. At the
Conference itself the declaration of the Bolsheviks had proclaimed
the coming congress of the Soviets the sovereign organ of the
country. "Only such decisions and proposals of the present Con-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

ference . . . can find their way to realization as are ratified by
the All-Russian Congress of Workers, Peasants* and Soldiers
Deputies." The resolution favoring a boycott of the Pre~ParIia~
ment, supported by one-half of the members of the Central
Committee against the other half, declared: "We place the ques-
tion of our parties 7 participation in the Pro-Parliament in direct
dependence upon those measures which the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets shall take to create a revolutionary government.'* This
appeal to the Congress of Soviets runs through all the Bolshevik
documents of this period almost without exception*

With the peasant war kindling, the national movements grow-
ing bitter, the breakdown going deeper, the front disintegrating,
the government unravelling, the Soviets were becoming the sole
support of the creative forces. Every question turned into a ques-
tion about the power, and the problem of power led straight to
the Congress of Soviets, This Congress must give the answer to all
questions, among them the question of the Constituent Assembly.
Not one party had yet withdrawn the slogan of the Constit-
uent Assembly, and this included the Bolsheviks. But almost un-
noticeably in the course of the events of the revolution, this chief
democratic slogan, which had for a decade and a half tinged with
its color the heroic struggle of the masses, had grown pale and
faded out, had somehow been ground between millstones, had
become an empty shell, a form naked of content, a tradition and
not a prospect. There was nothing mysterious in this process.
The development of the revolution had reached the point of a
direct battle for power between the two basic classes of society,
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. A Constituent Assembly could
give nothing either to the one or the other. The petty bourgeoisie
of the town and country could play only an auxiliary and
secondary role in this conflict. They were in any case incapable
of seizing the power themselves. If the preceding months had
proved anything, they had proved that. Nevertheless in a Con-
stituent Assembly the petty bourgeoisie might still win and they
actually did win as it turned out a majority. And to what end?
Only to the end of not knowing what to do with it. This reveals
the bankruptcy of formal democracy in a deep historic crisis.
It reveals the strength of tradition, however, that even on the eve

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVIET CONGRESS

of the last battle neither camp had yet renounced the name of the
Constituent Assembly. But as a matter of fact the bourgeoisie
had appealed from the Constituent Assembly to Kornilov, and
the Bolsheviks to the Congress of Soviets.

It may be confidently assumed that rather wide sections of
the people, and even certain small strata of the Bolshevik party,
nourished certain constitutional illusions of their own in regard
to the Congress of Soviets that is, they associated with it the
idea of an automatic and painless transfer of power from the
hands of the Coalition to the hands of the Soviet. In reality it
would be necessary to take the power by force; it was impossible
to do this by voting. Only an armed insurrection could decide
the question.

However, of all the illusions which accompany as an in-
evitable premise every great popular movement, even the most
realistic, this illusion of a soviet "parliamentarism" was in all the
combined circumstances the least dangerous. The Soviets were in
reality struggling for the power; they were continually more
and more relying upon armed force; they were becoming gov-
ernments in the localities; they were winning their own congress
in a fight. Thus there remained but little place for constitutional
illusions, and what few survived were washed away in the process
of the struggle.

In coordinating the revolutionary efforts of the workers
and soldiers of the whole country, giving them a single goal, giv-
ing them unity of aim and a single date for action, the slogan of
the Soviet Congress at the same time made it possible to screen
the semi-conspirative, semi-public preparation of an insurrection
with continual appeals to the legal representation of the work-
ers, soldiers and peasants. Having thus promoted the assembling
of forces for the revolution, the Congress of Soviets was after-
ward to sanction its results and give the new government a
form irreproachable in the eyes of the people.

CHAPTER IV
THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

IN spite of the change of mood beginning toward the end of
July, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks dominated
the reorganized Petrograd garrison all through August. The
proletariat was disarmed; the Red Guard had kept only a few
thousand rifles* In those circumstances, notwithstanding the fact
that the masses were again coming over to the Bolsheviks, an in-
surrection might end in cruel defeat.

The situation steadily changed, however, through September*
After the revolt of the generals the Compromisers swiftly lost
their following in the garrison. Distrust of the Bolsheviks was re-
placed by sympathy, or at the worst by a watchful neutrality.
But the sympathy was not active. The garrison remained in a
political sense extremely shaky and as muzhiks are suspicious.
Aren't the Bolsheviks going to deceive us? Will they really give
us peace and land? The majority of the soldiers still had no Idea
of fighting for these aims under the banner of the Bolsheviks.
And since there remained in the garrison an almost completely
unabsorbed minority hostile to the Bolsheviks five or sk thou-
sand junkers, three Cossack regiments, a bicycle battalion and
an armored car division the outcome of a conflict in September
seemed doubtful. To help things along, however, the course of
. events brought one more object lesson in which the fate of the
Petrograd soldiers was shown to be inseparably bound up with
the fate of the revolution and the Bolsheviks.

The right to control bodies of armed men is a fundamental
right of the state power. The first Provisional Government, wished
upon the people by the Executive Committee, gave an obligation
not to disarm and not to remove from Petrograd those military
units which had taken part In the February overturn, This was
the formal beginning of a military dualism inseparable in essence
from the double sovereignty. The major political disturbances

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

of the succeeding months the April demonstration, the July
Days, the preparation of the Kornilov insurrection and its
liquidation each one inevitably ran into the question of the
subordination of the Petrograd garrison. But conflicts between
the government and the Compromisers upon this theme were,
after all, a family matter, and ended amicably. "With the Bol-
shevization of the garrison things took a different turn. The sol-
diers themselves now began to recall that obligation given by
the government to the Executive Committee in March and
treacherously broken by them. On September 8th the soldiers'
section of the Soviet put forward a demand that the regiments
transferred to the front in connection with the July events be
returned to Petrograd. This while the members of the Coalition
were tearing their hair about how to get rid of the remaining
regiments.

In a number of provincial cities things stood about the same
way as in the capital. During July and August the local garrisons
underwent a patriotic reconstruction; during August and Sep-
tember the reconstructed garrisons underwent a process of Bol-
shevization. It was then necessary to begin over from the begin-
ning that is, once more undertake transfers and reconstructions.
In preparing its blow against Petrograd the government began
with the provinces. Its political motives were carefully concealed
under pretexts of strategy. On September 27th a joint session
of the Soviets of Reval that of the city and the fortress
adopted on the question of transfers the following resolution: To
consider a re-grouping of forces admissible only when agreed to
in advance by the corresponding Soviets. The leaders of the
Vladimir soviet inquired of Moscow whether they should obey
an order of Kerensky transferring the whole garrison. The Mos-
cow regional bureau of the Bolsheviks observed that "orders of
this kind are becoming systematic in relation to the revolutionary-
minded garrisons." Before surrendering all its rights, the Pro-
visional Government was trying to get hold of the fundamental
right of every government the right to dispose o armed bodies
of men.

The reorganization of the Petrograd garrison was becoming
all the more urgent because the coming Congress of Soviets was

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

destined to carry to a decision one way or other the struggle for
power. The bourgeois press, led by the Kadet organ RCC/J, was
asserting every morning that we must not **Iet the Bolsheviks
choose the moment for a declaration of civil war/* That meant:
"We must strike a timely blow at the Bolsheviks* The attempt at a
preliminary change of the correlation of forces in the garrison
flowed inevitably from this premise. Arguments from strategic
considerations looked sufficiently impressive after the fall of Riga
and the loss of the Moon-sund Islands. District headquarters
issued an order for the reorganization of the Petrograd units in
preparation for an offensive. At the same time, upon the initiative
of the Compromisers, the matter was brought up in the soldiers*
section of the Soviet. Here the plan of the enemy was not bad:
presenting a peremptory strategic demand to the Soviet, to snatch
their military support from under the feet of the Bolsheviks, or
in case the Soviet resisted, to provoke a sharp conflict between the
Petrograd garrison and the front, which was in need of sup-
plementary forces and replacements.

The leaders of the Soviet, quite well aware of the trap which
had been set for them, made up their minds to feel out the ground
carefully before taking any irrevocable step. A flat refusal to
fulfil the order was possible only if they were sure that the
motives of the refusal would be correctly understood by the front.
Otherwise it might be more advantageous to carry out, by agree-
ment with the trenches, a replacement of certain units of the
garrison with revolutionary units from the front which were
in need of rest. It was in this latter sense, as we have shown above,
that the Reval soviet had already spoken.

The soldiers approached the question more brusquely. Take
the offensive at the front now, in the middle of autumn? Reconcile
themselves to a new winter campaign? No, they simply had no
room in their heads for that idea. The patriotic press immediately
opened fire on the garrison: the Petrograd regiments, grown fat
in idleness, are betraying the front. The workers took the side of
the soldiers. The Putilov men were the first to protest against the
transfer of the regiments. From that time on the question was
never absent from the order of the day either in barrack or
factory. This drew together the two sections of the Soviet. The

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

regiments began to support most heartily tlie demand that the
workers be armed.

Attempting to kindle the patriotism of the masses by threat-
ening the loss of Petrograd, the Compromisers introduced into
the Soviet on October 9 a motion to create a "Committee of
Revolutionary Defense," whose task should be to take part in the
defense of the capital with the active cooperation of the workers.
While refusing to assume responsibility for "the so-called strategy
of the Provisional Government and in particular the removal
of troops from Petrograd" the Soviet nevertheless had made
no haste to express itself upon the substance of the order remov-
ing the soldiers, but had decided to test its motives and the facts
upon which it was based. The Mensheviks had raised a protest:
It is not permissible to interfere in the operative orders of the
commanding staff. But it was only a month and a half since they
had talked the same way about the conspiratorial orders of
Kornilov, and they were reminded of this. In order to test the
question whether the removal of the troops was dictated by mili-
tary or political considerations, a competent body was needed. To
the extreme surprise of the Compromisers the Bolsheviks accepted
the idea of a "Committee of Defense." This committee should be
the one to gather all data relating to the defense of the capital.
That was an important step. Having snatched this dangerous
weapon from the hands of the enemy, the Soviet remained in a
position to turn the decision about removing the troops this way
or that according to circumstances but in any case against the
government and the Compromisers.

The Bolsheviks quite naturally seized upon this Menshevik
project of a military committee, for there had been conversations
often enough in their own ranks about the necessity of creating
in good season an authoritative Soviet committee to lead the com-
ing insurrection. In the Military Organization of the party they
had even drawn up plans for such a body. The one difficulty
they had not yet got over was that of reconciling an instrument
of insurrection with an elective and openly functioning Soviet,
upon whose benches, moreover, sat representatives of the hostile
parties. The patriotic proposal of the Mensheviks, therefore, came
up most appropriately, and came up just in time to assist in the

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

creation of a revolutionary headquarters a body soon to be re-
named "Military Revolutionary Committee" and to become the
chief lever of the revolution.

Two years after the events described above, the author of this
book wrote in an article dedicated to the October revolution:
"As soon as the order for the removal of the troops was com-
municated by Headquarters to the Executive Committee of the
Petrograd soviet ... it became clear that this question in its
further development would have decisive political significance."
The idea of an insurrection began to take form from that mo-
ment. It was no longer necessary to invent a Soviet body. The real
aim of the future committee was unequivocally brought out when
in the same session Trotsky concluded his report on the withdrawal
of the Bolsheviks from the Pre~Parliament with the exclamation:
"Long live the direct and open struggle for a revolutionary power
throughout the country!" That was a translation into the language
of soviet legality of the slogan: "Long live the armed insurrec-
tion!"

On the very next day, the 10th, the Central Committee of
the Bolsheviks, adopted in secret session the resolution of Lenin
presenting armed insurrection as the practical task of the com-
ing days. From that moment the party assumed a clear and im-
perative fighting formation. The Committee of Defense was in-
cluded in its plans for a direct struggle for power.

The government and its allies surrounded the garrison with
concentric circles. On the llth the commander of the Northern
front, General Cheremissov, reported to the War Minister a de-
mand of the army committees that the tired-out front units
be replaced by Petersburg units from the rear. In this instance
Headquarters was merely a transmitting mechanism between
the Compromisers in the army committees and their Petrograd
leaders, who were striving to create a broad cover for the plans of
Kerensky. The Coalition press accompanied this encircling opera-
tion with a symphony of patriotic ravings. Daily meetings of the
regiments and factories demonstrated, however, that this music
of the ruling spheres was not making the slightest impression
upon the lower ranks. On the 12th, a mass meeting of the work-
ers of one of the most revolutionary factories of the capital (the

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

Old Parviainen) made the following answer to the attacks of
the bourgeoisie: "We declare that we will go into the street when
we deem it advisable. We are not afraid of the approaching strug-
gle, and we confidently believe that we will come off victorious."

In creating a commission to draw up regulations for the
"Committee of Defense/* the Executive Committee of the Petro-
grad Soviet designated for the future military body such tasks
as the following: to get in touch with the Northern front and
with the headquarters of the Petrograd district, with Centrobalt
and the regional soviet of Finland, in order to ascertain the mili-
tary situation and take the necessary measures: to take a census
of the personal composition of the garrison of Petrograd and its
environs, also of the ammunition and military supplies; to take
measures for the preservation of discipline in the soldier and
worker masses. The formulas were all-inclusive and at the same
time ambiguous: they almost all balanced on a fine line between
defense of the capital and armed insurrection. However, these
two tasks, heretofore mutually exclusive, were now in actual
fact growing into one. Having seized the power, the Soviet would
be compelled to undertake the military defense of Petrograd.
The element of defense-camouflage was not therefore violently
dragged in, but flowed to some extent from the conditions pre-
ceding the insurrection.

With this same purpose of camouflage a Social Revolutionary
and not a Bolshevik was placed at the head of the commission on
the "Committee of Defense." This was a young and modest in-
tendant, Lazimir, one of those Left Social Revolutionaries who
were already traveling with the Bolsheviks before the insurrec-
tion although, to be sure, not always foreseeing whither the
course would lead. Lazimir's preliminary rough draft was edited
by Trotsky in two directions: the practical plans relating to the
conquest of the garrison were more sharply defined, the general
revolutionary goal was still more glazed over. As ratified by the
Executive Committee against the protest of two Mensheviks, the
draft included in the staff of the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee the presidiums of the Soviet and of the soldiers' section,
representatives of the fleet, of the regional committee of Finland,
of the railroad unions, of the factory committees, the trade unions,

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the party military organizations, the Red Guard, etc. The or-
ganizational basis was the same as in many other cases, but the
personal composition of the committee was determined by its
new tasks. It was assumed that the organizations would send
representatives familiar with military affairs or standing near to
the garrison. The character of an organ should be conditioned
by its function.

Another new formation of this period was no less important.
Under the direction of the Military Revolutionary Committee
there was created a Permanent Conference of the Garrison. The
soldiers' section represented the garrison politically, the deputies
being elected under the party symbols. The Garrison Conference,
however, was to consist of the regimental committees which
guided the daily lives of their units and thus constituted a more
immediate practical "guild" representation. The analogy between
the regimental and the factory committees is obvious. Through
the mediation of the workers* section of the Soviet the Bolshe-
viks were able upon big political questions to rely confidently
upon the workers. But in order to become masters in the factories
it had been necessary to carry the factory and shop committees.
The composition of the soldiers' section guaranteed to the Bol-
sheviks the political sympathy of the majority of the garrison*
But in order to get the practical disposal of the military units it
was necessary to rely directly on the regimental committees. This
explains why in the period preceding the insurrection the Gar-
rison Conference naturally crowded out the Soldiers' section and
moved to the center of the stage. The more prominent deputies
in the section were also, by the way, members of the Conference.

In an article written not long before these days "The Crisis
is Ripe" Lenin had reproachfully asked: "What has the party
done in the matter of ascertaining the attitude of the troops,
etc. . . ?" Notwithstanding the devoted work of the Military
Organization Lenin's reproach was just. A strictly military ex-
amination of the forces and materials was difficult for the party
to achieve: the habit of mind was lacking and the approach. This
situation changed the moment the Garrison Conference came on
the scene. Henceforth a living panorama of the garrison not

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

only of the capital but also of the military ring surrounding it -
passed before the eyes of the leaders.

On the 12th the Executive Committee took up the regulations
drafted by Lazimir's commission. In spite of the session's being
secret the debate was carried on to a certain extent in equivocal
language. "Here they said one thing and meant another," writes
Sukhanov not unjustly. The regulations provided for the estab-
lishment under the Committee of departments of defense, sup-
plies, communications, intelligence, etc.: this was a headquarters
or counter-quarters. They declared it to be the aim of the Con-
ference to raise the fighting capacity of the garrison: that was
entirely true, but a fighting capacity may be applied in different
ways. The Mensheviks observed with helpless indignation that
an idea advanced by them for patriotic purposes was being con-
verted into a screen for the preparation of an insurrection. The
camouflage was by no means impenetrable everybody under-
stood what the talk was about but at the same time it could not
be broken through. Had not the Compromisers themselves be-
haved in exactly the same way in the past, grouping the garrison
around themselves at critical moments and creating sovereign
bodies parallel with those of the government? The Bolsheviks
were merely following the traditions, so to speak, of the dual
power. But they were bringing a new content into these old forms.
What had formerly served the purpose of compromise was now
leading to civil war. The Mensheviks demanded that it be placed
in the record that they were against the undertaking as a whole.
This platonic request was granted.

On the next day the question of the Military Revolutionary
Committee and the Garrison Conference was taken up by the
soldiers 9 section, which only a little while before had constituted
the lifeguard of the Compromisers. The chief place in this very
significant session was rightly occupied by the president of the
Centrobalt, the sailor Dybenko, a black-bearded giant, a man
who never had to look in his pocket for a word. The speech of
this Helsingfors guest crashed into the stagnant atmosphere of
the garrison like a keen and fresh sea wind. Dybenko told about
the final break of the fleet with the government and their new

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

attitudes to the command. Before the latest naval operations be-
gan, he said, the admiral addressed a question to the Congress of
Sailors then sitting: Will they carry out military orders? We an-
swered: "We will under supervision from our side. But . . .
if we see that the fleet is threatened with destruction, the com-
manding staff will be the first to hang from the mast head/' To
the Petrograd garrison this was a new language. Even in the fleet
it had come into use only in the last few days. It was the language
of insurrection. The little group of Mcnshcviks grumbled dis-
tractedly in a corner. The presidium looked out with some alarm
upon that compact mass of gray soldier coats. Not one protesting
voice from their ranks! Eyes burned like coals in their excited
faces. A spirit of daring was in the air,

In conclusion, stimulated by the universal sympathy, Dy-
benko confidently exclaimed: "They talk about the need of bring-
ing out the Petrograd garrison for the defense of the approaches
to Petrograd and of Reval in particular. Don't believe a word of
it. We will defend Reval ourselves. Stay here and defend the
interests of the revolution . . . When we need your support we
will say so ourselves, and I am confident that you will support
us." This challenge, which exactly matched the mood of the sol-
diers, called out a veritable whirlwind of sincere enthusiasm in
which the protests of a few individual Mensheviks were com-
pletely drowned. The question of removing the regiments was
settled from that moment.

The regulations proposed by Lazimir were adopted by a
majority of 283 votes against 1, with 23 abstaining. These figures,
unexpected even to the Bolsheviks, gave a measure of the pressure
of the revolutionary masses. The vote meant that the soldiers*
section had openly and officially transferred the administration
of the garrison from headquarters to the Military Revolution-
ary Committee. The coming days would show that this was no
mere gesture.

On that same day the Executive Committee of the Petrograd
Soviet made public the creation under its supervision of a special
department of the Red Guard. The matter of arming the work-
ers, neglected under the Compromisers and even obstructed by
them, had become one of the, most important tasks of the Bol-

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

shevik Soviet. The suspicious attitude of the soldiers toward the
Red Guard was already far in the past. On the contrary, almost all
the resolutions of the regiments contained a demand for the arm-
ing of the workers. From now on the Red Guard and the gar-
rison stand side by side. Soon they will be still more closely united
by a common submission to the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee.

The government was worried. On the morning of the 14th,
a conference of the ministers in Kerensky's office ratified the
measures undertaken by headquarters against the "coming-out"
under preparation. The rulers were guessing: Will it stop this
time at an armed demonstration or will it go to the point of in-
surrection? The commander of the district said to the represent-
atives of the press: "In any case we are ready." Those doomed to
death not infrequently experience an afflux of life force just be-
fore the end.

At a joint session of the Executive Committees, Dan, imitat-
ing the June intonations of Tseretelli, who had now taken refuge
in the Caucasus, demanded of the Bolsheviks an answer to the
question: Do they intend to come out, and if they do, when?
From the answer of Riazanov, the Menshevik Bogdanov drew the
not unjustified conclusion that the Bolsheviks were preparing an
insurrection and would stand at the head of it. The Menshevik
paper wrote: "And the Bolsheviks are evidently relying in their
plans for a coming 'seizure of power' on the garrison's staying
here." But in this remark the phrase "seizure of power" was in
quotation marks. The Compromisers still did not seriously believe
in the danger. They did not fear the victory of the Bolsheviks
so much as the triumph of the counter-revolution in consequence
of new civil war conflicts.

Having undertaken to arm the workers, the Soviet had to
find its way to the weapons. This did not happen all at once. Here
too each practical step forward was suggested by the masses. It
was only necessary to listen attentively to their suggestions. Four
years after the event, Trotsky, in an evening devoted to recol-
lections of the October revolution, told the following story:
"When a delegation from the workers came to me and said they
needed weapons, I answered: 'But the arsenals, you see, are not

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

in our hands.' They answered: 'We have been to the Sestroretsk
Arms Factory.' 'Well, and what about It?' They said that if the
Soviet ordered they would deliver/ I gave an order for five
thousand rifles, and they got them the same day. That was a
first experiment." The hostile press immediately raised a cry
against this delivery of weapons by a government factory upon
the order of a person indicted for state treason and only released
from prison on bail. The government kept still, but the highest
organ of the democracy came forward with a strict command.
Weapons were to be given to nobody without its permission the
permission of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets.
It might seem that on the question of delivering weapons Dan
and Gotz were as little in a position to forbid, as Trotsky to per-
mit or give orders. The factories and arsenals were supposed to be
under government administration. But ignoring the official au-
thorities at all serious moments had become a tradition with the
Central Executive Committee, and had permanently entered into
the customs of the government itself, corresponding as it did to
the nature of things. The violation of tradition and custom, came
however from another direction. Having ceased to distinguish
the thunderings of the Central Executive Committee from the
lightnings of Kerensky, the workers and soldiers ignored them
both.

It was more convenient to demand the transfer of the Petro-
grad regiments in the name of the front than in the name of
the chancelleries at the rear. For these reasons Kerensky placed
the Petrograd garrison under the commander-in-chief of the
Northern front, Cheremissov. While excluding the capital in its
military aspect from his own administration as the head of the
government, Kerensky took comfort in the thought that he
would subject it to himself as commander-in-chief of the army.
In his turn General Cheremissov, who was going to have a very
hard nut to crack, sought help from the commissars and com-
mittee-men. With their common labors a plan of future activities
was drawn up. On the 7th the headquarters at the front, together
with the army organizations, was to summon representatives of
the Petrograd Soviet to Pskov in order in the presence of the
trenches to present them with a brusque demand.

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTION AKY COMMITTEE

There was nothing for the Petrograd Soviet to do but accept
the challenge. The delegation of a score or so appointed at the
session of the 16th about half members of the Soviet and half
representatives of the regiments was headed by the president of
the Workers' Section, Feodorov, and leaders of the Soldiers' Sec-
tion and the Military Organization of the Bolsheviks Lashe-
vich, Sadovsky, Mekhonoshin, Dashkevich and others. A few
Left Social Revolutionaries and Menshevik-Internationalists, in-
cluded in the delegation, promised to defend the policy of the
Soviet. At a conference of the delegates held before their departure
the draft of a declaration proposed by Sverdlov was adopted.

The same session of the Soviet took up the regulations of 'the
Military Revolutionary Committee. This institution had barely
come into existence when it assumed in the eyes of the enemy an
aspect growing every day more hateful. "The Bolsheviks make no
answer," cried an orator of the opposition, "to the direct ques-
tion: Are they preparing an attack? This is either cowardice or
lack of confidence in their forces." The meeting greeted this re-
mark with hearty laughter: the representative of the government
party was demanding that the party of insurrection open the
secrets of its heart to him. The new committee, continued the
orator, is nothing else but "a revolutionary headquarters for the
seizure of power." They, the Mensheviks, would not enter it.
"How many are there of you?" cried a voice from the benches:
there were indeed only a few Mensheviks in the Soviet, fifty alto-
gether. But nevertheless it seemed authoritatively known to them
that "the masses are not in favor of coming out." In his reply
Trotsky did not deny that the Bolsheviks were preparing for a
seizure of power: "We make no secret of that." But at present,
he said, that is not the question. The government has demanded
the removal of the revolutionary troops from Petrograd and to
that "we have to answer yes or no." The regulations drafted by
Lazimir were adopted by an overwhelming majority. The presi-
dent proposed to the Military Revolutionary Committee to begin
work on the following day. Thus one more forward step was
taken.

The commander of the district, Polkovnikov, had that day
once more reported to the government that an action was under

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

preparation by the Bolsheviks. The report was couched in bold
language: the garrison as a whole is on the side of the government;
the officers' schools have received an order to be ready. In an ap-
peal to the population Polkovnikov promised in case of neces-
sity to adopt "the most extreme measures." The burgomaster,
Schreider, a Social Revolutionary, added a, prayer on his part that
"no disorders shall be instigated so that we may avoid actual
famine in the capital/' Threatening and adjuring, making bold
and making timid, the press meanwhile was rising to a higher
and higher note.

To impress the imagination of delegates from the Petrograd
Soviet, a military-theatrical setting was arranged for the recep-
tion in Pskov. In the office of headquarters around tables covered
with imposing maps stood notable generals, high commissars,
with Voitinsky at their head, and representatives of the army com-
mittees. The chiefs of the departments read reports of the military
situation on land and sea. All the reports came to one and the same
conclusion: It is necessary to call out the Petrograd garrison im-
mediately for the defense of the approaches to the capital. The
commissars and committee-men indignantly refuted all suspicions
in regard to hidden political motives: the whole operation, they
declared, has been dictated by strategic necessity. The delegates
had no direct proofs to the contrary: in this kind of business
evidence does not grow on every bush. But the whole situation
was a refutation. The front had no lack of men. What it lacked
was willingness to fight. The mood of the Petrograd garrison was
by no means such as to reinforce a front so shaken. Moreover the
lessons of the Kornilov days were still in the memories of all.
Thoroughly convinced of their correctness, the delegation easily
resisted the assault of headquarters, and returned to Petrograd
more unanimous than when they had left.

Those direct proofs which the participants at that time lacked
are now at the disposal of the historian. The secret military cor-
respondence proves that it was not the front which had demanded
the Petrograd regiments, but that Kerensky had imposed them
upon the front. To a telegram from his War Minister, the
commander-in-chief of the Northern front answered on the
direct wire: "Secret. 17. X. The initiative for sending the troops

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THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

of the Petrograd garrison to the front was yours and not mine.
. . . When it became clear that the troops of the Petrograd gar-
rison did not want to go to the front, that is, that they are not
capable of fighting, I then in a private conversation with your
officer-representative said that ... we have already plenty of.
such troops at the front; but in view of the desire expressed by
you to send them to the front I did not refuse them and I do
not refuse them now, if you, as before, consider their transfer
from Petrograd necessary." The semi-bellicose tone of this tele-
gram is explained by the fact that Cheremissov, a general with a
taste for high politics, having been considered "red" while in
the tzar's army, and having afterward become, according to
Miliukov's expression, "the favorite of the revolutionary de-
mocracy," had evidently come to the conclusion that it would
be better to draw apart in good season from the government and
its conflict with the Bolsheviks. The conduct of Cheremissov
during the days of the revolution wholly confirms this assump-
tion.

The struggle about the garrison interwove with the struggle
about the Soviet Congress. Only four or five days remained be-
fore the date originally designated. The "coming-out" was ex-
pected in connection with the Congress. It was assumed that as
in the July Days the movement would develop on the type of an
armed mass demonstration with street fighting. The right Men-
shevik Potressov, obviously relying upon data supplied by the
Intelligence Service, or by the French War Mission always bold
in the manufacture of forged documents expounded in the
bourgeois press the plan of a Bolshevik action which was to take
place on the night of October 17. The ingenious authors of the
plan did not forget to foretell that at one of the gates of the city
the Bolsheviks were to pick up the "dark elements." The soldiers
of the Guard regiments were as good at laughing as the gods of
Homer. The white pillars and chandeliers of Smolny shook with
uproarious volleys when Potressov's article was read at a meet-
ing of the Soviet. But the all-wise government, unable as ever
to see what was taking place before its eyes, took serious fright
at this awkward forgery, and hastily assembled at two o'clock
in the morning in order to hold off these "dark elements." After

101

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

renewed conferences between Kerensky and the military authori-
ties the necessary measures were taken. The guards of the Winter
Palace and the State Bank were reinforced; two training schools
were called in from Oranienbaum, and even an armored train
from the Rumanian front. "At the last moment," writes Miliukov,
"the Bolsheviks revoked their preparations. "Why they did this
is not clear." Even several years after the event the learned his-
torian still prefers to believe an invention which contained its
own refutation.

The authorities directed the militia to investigate the environs
of the city to see if they could find signs of any preparation for a
coming-out. The reports of the militia were a combination of live
observations with police stupidity. In the Alexandro-Nevsky
section, which contains a number of big factories, the investigators
found complete tranquillity. In the Vyborg district the necessity
of overthrowing the government was being openly preached, but
"externally" all was quiet. In the Vassilie-Ostrov district the
mood was high, but here too "external" signs of an action were not
to be observed. On the Narva side a redoubled agitation in favor
of action was going on, but it was impossible to get an answer
from anybody to the question, just when. Either the day and hour
were being kept strictly secret, or they were really unknown to
anybody. Decision: to reinforce the patrols in the suburbs and
have the commissars of the militia inspect the sentry posts more
frequently.

Certain correspondence in the Moscow liberal press is not a bad
supplement to the reports of the militia: "In the suburbs, at the
Petersburg factories, Nevsky, Obukhovsky and Putilov, Bolshe-
vik agitation in favor of a coming-out is in progress everywhere.
The workers are in a state to start moving at any moment. Dur-
ing recent days there has been observed in Petrograd an unheard
of influx of deserters. ... At the "Warsaw station you can't get
through because of the soldiers with their suspicious looks, their
burning eyes in excited faces. . . . There is information of the
presence in Petrograd of whole gangs of thieves who have caught
the smell of their prey. The dark forces are being organized, and
the dens and lunchrooms are brim full of them. . . ." Philistine
fright and police rumor here interweave with a certain amount

102

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

of austere fact. In approaching its climax the revolutionary crisis
stirred up the social deeps to the very bottom. Deserters and
robber-gangs and the dens of iniquity did actually all rise at the
rumble of the approaching earthquake. The leaders of society
gazed with physical horror at the unleashed forces of their own
regime, at its ulcers and vices. The revolution had not created but
only uncovered them.

At the headquarters of a corps in Dvinsk in those days, Baron
Budberg, a man already known to us, a bilious reactionary, but
not wanting a gift of observation and his own kind of penetra-
tion, wrote: "The Kadets, the Kadetoids, the Octobrists, and the
many-colored revolutionists of the ancient and of the March
formation, feel their end approaching and chirp and chatter
on all sides, reminding one of the Mussulman who tried to stop an
eclipse of the moon with a rattle."

The Garrison Conference was first called together on the 18th.
The telephonogram sent to the military units told them to re-
frain from actions on their own initiative, and fulfil only those
orders of headquarters which should be countersigned by the
Soldiers' Section. In this the Soviet was making a decisive and
open attempt to take control of the garrison. The telephonogram
was in essence nothing else than a summons to overthrow the
existing authorities. But it could be interpreted, if one wished,
as a peaceful act of replacing the Compromisers with Bolsheviks
in the mechanic of the dual power. Practically this came to
the same thing, but the more flexible interpretation left room
for illusions. The presidium of the Central Executive Committee,
considering itself the master of Smolny, made an attempt to stop
the despatch of the telephonogram. It only compromised itself once
more. The assembly of representatives of the regimental and com-
pany committees of Petrograd and the environs occurred at the
designated hour, and turned out to be extraordinarily large.

Thanks to the atmosphere created by the enemy, the reports
of the participants in this Garrison Conference automatically con-
centrated upon the question of the prospective "coming-out."
There occurred a significant muster-roll, upon which the leaders
would scarcely have ventured upon their own initiative. Those
against the action were the military school in Peterhof and the

103

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Ninth Cavalry Regiment. The squadrons of the cavalry of the
Guard were inclined to neutrality* The military school in Oranien-
baum would submit only to the commands of the Central Execu-
tive Committee. That exhausted the hostile or neutral voices.
Those declaring their readiness to come out at a word from the
Petrograd Soviet were the following: the Egersky, the Moscow,
the Volynsky, the Pavlovsky, the Keksgolmsky, the Semcnovsky,
the Izmailovsky, the first sharpshooters and the third reserve regi-
ments, the second Baltic crew, the electro-technical battalion and
the artillery division of the Guard; the grenadier regiment would
come out only at the summons of the Congress of Soviets* That was
enough. The less important units followed the lead of the ma-
jority. The representatives of the Central Executive Committee,
who had not long ago justly considered the Petrograd garrison
the source of their power, were now almost unanimously denied
the floor. In a state of impotent exasperation they left the "un-
authorized" assembly, which immediately thereafter at the sug-
gestion of the president declared: No orders are valid without the
countersign of the Soviet.

That which had been preparing in the minds of the garrison
during the last months, and especially weeks, was now crystalliz-
ing. The government turned out more insignificant than it had
been possible to think. While the town was buzzing with rumors
of a coming-out and of bloody battles, the Conference of Regi-
mental Committees, showing an overwhelming predominance
of Bolsheviks, made both demonstrations and mass battles es-
sentially unnecessary. The garrison was confidently advancing
to the revolution, seeing it not as an insurrection, but as a realiza-
tion of the irrefutable right of the Soviet to decide the fate of
the country. This movement had incomparable power, but at the
same time a certain heaviness. The party was obliged to attune
its activity with some skill to the political stride of the regiments,
a majority of whom were awaiting a summons from the Peters-
burg Soviet, but some from the Congress of Soviets.

In order to ward off the danger of even a temporary inter-
ference with the development of the offensive, it was necessary
to answer one question which was disturbing not only enemies
but friends: Will not an insurrection spontaneously break out

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THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

almost any day? In the tramways, on the streets, in the stores,
there was no talk but of an expected coming-out. On the Palace
Square, in front of the Winter Palace and the General Staff, long
queues of officers were offering the government their services and
receiving revolvers in exchange: in the hours of danger neither
the revolvers nor their owners will put in one second's appearance.
The leading editorials in all the current papers were devoted to
the question of the insurrection. Gorky demanded of the Bol-
sheviks that unless they were the "helpless playthings of the en-
raged multitude," they should refute these rumors. This alarm
of uncertainty penetrated even the workers' sections, and still
more the regiments. To them, too, it began to seem as though a
coming-out were being prepared without them. And by whom?
"Why was Smolny silent? The self -contradictory situation of the
Soviet as a public parliament and at the same time a revolutionary
headquarters, created great difficulties in those last moments. It
became impossible to remain longer silent.

"During the last days," declared Trotsky at the end of an eve-
ning's session of the Soviet, "the press has been full of communi-
cations, rumors, articles about an impending action. . . , The
decisions of the Petrograd Soviet are published and made known
to everybody. The Soviet is an elective institution, and . . , can-
not have a decision which would not be known to the workers
and soldiers. ... I declare in the name of the Soviet that no
armed actions have been settled upon by us, but if the Soviet in
the course of events should be obliged to set the date for a coming-
out the workers and soldiers would come out to the last man at its
summons. They say that I signed an order for five thousand
rifles. . . . Yes, I signed it. ... The Soviet will continue to
organize and arm the workers' guard." The delegates understood:
the battle was near, but without them and over their heads the
signal would not be given.

However, besides a reassuring explanation, the masses had to
have a clear revolutionary prospective. For this purpose the speaker
united the two questions removal of the garrison and coming
Congress of Soviets. "We are in conflict with the government
upon a question which may become extremely sharp. . , We
will not permit them ... to strip Petrograd of its revolutionary

105

THE TRIUMPH OP THE SOVIETS

garrison." This conflict is in its turn subordinate to another that
approaches. "It is known to the bourgeoisie that the Petrograd
Soviet is going to propose to the Congress of Soviets that they seize
the power. . . . And foreseeing an inevitable battle, the bour-
geois classes are trying to disarm Petrograd." The political set-up
of the revolution was first given in this speech with complete
definition: We expect to seize the power, we need the garrison,
and we will not give it up. "At the first attempt of the counter-
revolution to break up the Congress, we will answer with a
counter-attack which will be ruthless, and which we will carry
through to the end." Here, too, the announcement of a decisive
political offensive was made under the formulas of military de-
fense.

Sukhanov, who turned up at this meeting with a hopeless
plan to draw the Soviet into a celebration of Gorky's fiftieth anni-
versary, subsequently made an apt comment on the revolutionary
knot which was tied there. For Smolny, he said, the question of
the garrison is a question of insurrection; for the soldiers it is a
question of their own fate. "It would be difficult to imagine a
more fortunate starting point for the policy of those days/* This
did not prevent Sukhanov from considering the policy of the
Bolsheviks as a whole ruinous. Along with Gorky and thousands
of radical intellectuals he feared above all things that so-called
"enraged multitude" which was with admirable deliberation de-
veloping its offensive from day to day.

The Soviet was sufficiently powerful to announce openly its
program of state revolution and even set the date. At the same
time right up to the date set by itself for the complete victory
the Soviet was powerless in thousands of great and small ques-
tions. Kerensky, politically already reduced to a zero, was still
giving out decrees in the Winter Palace. Lenin, the inspirer of
this incomparable movement of the masses, was hiding under-
ground, and the Minister of Justice, Maliantovich, had renewed
in those days his instructions to the district attorney to bring
about Lenin's arrest. Even in Smolny, on its own territory, the all-
powerful Petrograd Soviet seemed to be living only by grace of
the authorities. The administration of the building, of the cash-
box, of the despatching room, the automobiles, the telephones

106

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

all was still in the hands of the Central Executive Committee
which itself only hung on by the mere thread of an abstract right
of succession.

Sukhanov tells how after the meeting he came out in the thick
of night on Smolny Square, in black darkness with rain coming
down in sheets. The whole crowd of delegates were hopelessly
milling around a couple of smoking and stinking automobiles
which had been assigned to the Bolshevik Soviet from the opulent
garages of the Central Executive Committee. "The president,
Trotsky, was also about to approach the automobile," relates this
omnipresent observer. "But after stopping and looking on for a
minute he chuckled and, splashing through the puddles, disap-
peared in the darkness." On the platform of the tramcar Sukhanov
ran into some unknown small-sized fellow of modest appearance
with a black goatee. The unknown tried to console Sukhanov in
all the discomforts of the long journey. Who is that? asked
Sukhanov of his Bolshevik companion. "An old party worker,
Sverdlov." In less than two weeks this small man with a little
black goatee will be president of the Central Executive Com-
mittee, the supreme governing power of the Soviet Republic. It
may be that Sverdlov consoled his traveling companion out of a
feeling of gratitude: Eight days before that in the apartment of
Sukhanov to be sure, without his knowledge had occurred
that meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee which placed
the armed insurrection on the order of the day.

The next morning the Central Executive Committee made an
attempt to turn back the wheel of events. The presidium con-
voked a "lawful" assembly of the garrison, drawing into it also
those backward committees which should long ago have been re-
elected, and which had not been present the day before. This
supplementary test of the garrison, while also giving something
new, still more clearly confirmed yesterday's picture. This time
those opposed to the coming-out were: a majority of the com-
mittees of the troops quartered in the Peter and Paul Fortress,
and the committees of the armored car division. They both an-
nounced their submission to the Central Executive Committee.
This information was not to be ignored.

Situated on an island washed by the Neva and its canal, be-

107

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

tween the center of the city and two outlying districts, this fortress
dominates the nearby bridges, and protects or, if you will,
lays bare from the side of the river the approaches to the Winter
Palace where the government had its seat. Although deprived of
military significance in large scale operations, the fortress can
speak a weighty word in a street fight. Moreover and this, per-
haps, is more important the well-stocked Kronverksky Arsenal
adjoins the fortress. The workers were in need of rifles yes, and
the more revolutionary regiments too were almost disarmed. The
importance of armored cars in a street battle needs no explana-
tion. On the side of the government they might cause many fruit-
less sacrifices; on the side of the insurrection they would shorten
the road to victory. In the approaching days the Bolsheviks would
have to give special attention to the fortress and the armored car
division. For the rest, the correlation of forces at this new con-
ference turned out to be the same as on the preceding day. The
attempt of the Central Executive Committee to carry its own very
cautious resolution was coldly repulsed by an overwhelming ma-
jority. Not having been summoned by the Petrograd Soviet, it
was noted, the conference does not consider itself empowered to
adopt decisions. The compromise leaders had themselves begged
for this supplementary slap in the face.

Finding the approach to the regiments barricaded below, the
Central Executive Committee tried to get hold of the garrison
from above. By agreement with the staff, they appointed Captain
Malevsky, a Social Revolutionary, chief commissar for the whole
district, and announced their willingness to recognize the com-
missars of the Soviet on condition that they submit to the chief
commissar. This attempt to get astride of the Bolshevik garrison
through the instrumentality of a captain unknown to anybody
was obviously hopeless. Having rejected it, the Soviet broke off the
negotiations.

The insurrection laid bare by Potressov had not occurred. The
enemy now confidently named another date: the 20th of October.
On that day, as we know, the Congress of Soviets was originally
to have opened, and the insurrection followed that Congress like
its own shadow. To be sure, the Congress had already postponed
its opening five days. Never mind: the object had moved, but the

108

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

shadow remained. This time, too, all necessary measures were
taken by the government to prevent a "coming-out." Reinforced
sentry guards were placed in the suburbs; Cossack patrols rode
through the workers' districts all night long; cavalry reserves
were concealed at various points throughout the city; the militia
was made ready for action and half of its members did continual
duty in the commissariats. Armored cars, light artillery and
machine guns were set up near the Winter Palace. The approaches
to the Palace were guarded by patrols.

Once more the insurrection which no one was preparing, and
for which no one had issued a call, did not take place. The day
went by more peacefully than many others; work in the shops
and factories never ceased. Izvestia, edited by Dan, crowed about
this victory over the Bolsheviks: "Their adventuring with armed
demonstrations in Petrograd is about over." The Bolsheviks have
been crushed by the mere indignation of the united democracy:
"They are already surrendering." One might literally think that
the enemy had lost their heads and were deliberately trying with
untimely frights and still less timely trumpetings of victory to
lead "public opinion" astray, and conceal the actual plans of the
Bolsheviks.

The decision to create a Military Revolutionary Committee,
first introduced on the 9th, was passed at a plenary session of the
Soviet only a week later. The Soviet is not a party; its machinery
is heavy. Four days more were required to form the Committee.
Those ten days, however, did not go for nothing: the conquest of
the garrison was in full swing, the Conference of Regimental
Committees had demonstrated its viability, the arming of the
workers was going forward. And thus the Military Revolutionary
Committee, although it went to work only on the 20th, five days
before the insurrection, found ready to its hands a sufficiently
well organized dominion. Being boycotted by the Compromisers,
the staff of the Committee contained only Bolsheviks and Left
Social Revolutionaries: that eased and simplified the task. Of
the Social Revolutionaries only Lazimir did any work, and he was
even placed at the head of the bureau in order to emphasize the
fact that the Committee was a Soviet and not a party institution.
In essence, however, the Committee, whose president was Trotsky,

109

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

and its chief workers Podvoisky, Antonov-Ovseenko, Lashevich,
Sadovsky, and Mekhonoshin, relied exclusively upon Bolsheviks.
The committee hardly met once in plenary session with delegates
present from all the institutions listed in its regulations. The work
was carried on through the bureau under the guidance of the presi-
dent, with Sverdlov brought in upon all important matters. And
that was the general staff of the insurrection.

The bulletin of the Committee thus modestly registers its
first steps: commissars were appointed in the combatant units
of the garrison and in certain institutions and store houses "for
observation and leadership/* This meant that, having won the
garrison politically, the Soviet was now getting organizational
control of it. The dominant role in selecting these commissars
was played by the Military Organization of the Bolsheviks.
Among its Petrograd members, approximately a thousand, there
was no small number of resolute soldiers and young officers ut-
terly devoted to the revolution, and who had since the July Days
been tempered in the prisons of Kerensky* The commissars re-
cruited from its midst found in the troops of the garrison a soil
well prepared. The garrison considered them its own and sub-
mitted to their orders with complete willingness.

The initiative in getting possession of institutions came in most
cases from below. The workers and clerical employees of the
arsenal adjoining the Peter and Paul Fortress themselves raised
the question of the necessity of establishing control over the
giving out of arms. A commissar sent there succeeded in stopping
a supplemental arming of the junkers, held back 10,000 rifles on
their way to the Don region, and smaller assignments to a num-
ber of suspicious organizations and persons. This control was
soon extended to other arsenals and even to private dealers in
weapons. It was only necessary to appeal to the committee of the
soldiers, workers or clerical employees of the given institution or
store, and the resistance of the administration would be im-
mediately broken. Weapons were given out henceforth only upon
the order of the commissars.

The typographical workers, through their union, called the
attention of the Committee to an increase of Black Hundred
leaflets and brochures. It was decided that in all suspicious cases

110

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

the printers' union should come for instructions to the Military
Revolutionary Committee. This control through the typographical
workers was the most effective of all possible forms of control
over the printed agitation of the counter-revolution.

Not satisfied with its formal denial of the rumor of an in-
surrection, the Soviet openly designated Sunday the 22nd as the
day for a peaceful review of its forces not, however, in the form
of street processions, but of meetings in the factories, barracks,
and all the major institutions of Petrograd. With the obvious aim
of provoking bloody interference, some mysterious worshippers
set the same day for a church procession through the streets of the
capital. Their summons, issued in the name of some unknown
Cossacks, invited the citizens to take part in a religious procession
"in memory of the delivery of Moscow from the enemy in 1812."
This historical pretext was none too genuine, but over and above
this the organizations proposed to the Almighty to hand down a
blessing upon the Cossack arms "standing guard against the
enemies of the Russian land/' a proposal which clearly related
to the year 1917.

There was no reason to fear a serious counter-revolutionary
manifestation. The clergy had no power among the Petrograd
masses; they could raise up against the Soviet under church ban-
ners only pitiful remnants of the Black Hundred gangs. But with
the cooperation of the experienced provocateurs of the Intel-
ligence Service and of Cossack officers, bloody encounters were
not impossible. As a measure of prevention the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee undertook in the first place to strengthen its
influence upon the Cossack regiments; a stricter regime was also
introduced in the building occupied by the revolutionary staff.
"It was no longer easy to get into Smolny," writes John Reed.
"The pass system was changed every few hours; for spies con-
tinually sneaked through." At a meeting of the Garrison Con-
ference on the 21st devoted to a discussion of the "Soviet Day"
to follow, the spokesman proposed a series of measures for the
prevention of possible street clashes. The fourth Cossack regi-
ment, which stood farthest to the Left, announced through its
delegates that it would not take part in the religious procession.
The fourteenth Cossack regiment announced that it would strug-

111

THE TRIUMPH OP THE SOVIETS

gle with all its power against the attempts of the counter-
revolution, but at the same time that it considered a coming-out
for the seizure of power "untimely." Of the three Cossack regi-
ments only one was absent the Uralsky the most backward
regiment, one brought into Petrograd in July for the crushing of
the Bolsheviks.

Upon the proposal of Trotsky, the Conference adopted three
short resolutions: ( 1 ) "The garrison of Petrograd and its environs
promises the Military Revolutionary Committee full support in
all its steps . . ."; (2) October 22nd is to be a day devoted to a
peaceful review of forces. . . . The garrison appeals to the Cos-
sacks: , . . "We invite you to our meetings tomorrow, You are
welcome, brother Cossacks!"; (3) "The All-Russian Congress of
Soviets must take the power in its hands and guarantee to the
people peace, land and bread." The garrison solemnly promises to
place all its forces at the disposal of the Soviet Congress. "Rely
upon us, authorized representatives of the soldiers, workers and
peasants. We are all at our posts ready to conquer or die." Hun-
dreds of hands were raised for this resolution which sealed the
program of the insurrection. Fifty-seven men abstained* These
were the "neutrals" that is, the wavering enemy. Not one hand
was raised against the resolution. The noose around the neck of
the February regime was being drawn in a reliable knot.

In the course of the day it became known that the mysterious
instigators of the religious procession had given up their dem-
onstration "at the suggestion of the commander-in-chief of the
district." This serious moral success, an excellent measure of the
social pressure of the Garrison Conference, permitted a confident
prediction that on the following day the enemy, generally speak-
ing, would not venture to poke their heads into the street.

The Military Revolutionary Committee appointed three com-
missars to the district headquarters Sadovsky, Mekhonoshin and
Lazimir, Orders of the commander were to become effective
only when countersigned by one of these three. At a telephone
call from Smolny the staff sent an automobile for the delegation
the customs of the dual power were still in effect but contrary
to expectations this' extreme politeness of the staff did not imply
a readiness to make concessions.

112

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

After listening to the declaration of Sadovsky, Polkovnikov
stated that he did not recognize any commissars and had no need
of any guardianship. To a hint from the delegation that along
that road headquarters might meet with resistance from the side
of the troops, Polkovnikov dryly answered that the garrison was
in his hands and its submission was assured. "His assurance was
sincere," writes Mekhonoshin in his memoirs. "We felt no affecta-
tion in it." For the return trip to Smolny the delegates did not
receive an official automobile.

A special session of the Conference, to which Trotsky and
Sverdlov were summoned, adopted a decision: To consider the
break with headquarters an accomplished fact, and make it the
starting point for a further offensive. The first condition of suc-
cess: The districts must be kept in touch with all stages and
episodes of the struggle. The enemy must not be allowed to catch
the masses unaware. Through the district Soviets and committees
of the party the information was sent into all parts of the town.
The regiments were immediately informed of what had happened.
The instructions were confirmed: Carry out only those orders
which are countersigned by the commissars. It was also suggested
that they send out only the most reliable soldiers for patrol duty.

But headquarters also decided to take measures. Spurred on
evidently by his compromisist allies, Polkovnikov called together
at one o'clock in the afternoon his own conference of the garrison,
with representatives of the Central Executive Committee present.
Anticipating this move of the enemy, the Military Revolutionary
Committee called an emergency conference of the regimental
committees at eleven o'clock, and here it was decided to formulate
the break with headquarters. The appeal to the troops of Petrograd
and the environs drawn up at this meeting speaks the language of
a declaration of war. "Having broken with the organized gar-
rison of the capital, headquarters is a direct instrument of the
counter-revolutionary forces." The Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee disclaims all responsibility for the activities of headquar-
ters, and standing at the head of the garrison takes upon itself
"the defense of revolutionary order against counter-revolutionary
attempts."

That was a decisive step on the road to insurrection. Or was

113

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

it perhaps only the next conflict in the mechanics of that dual
power which is so full of conflicts? Headquarters, at any rate,
tried for its own consolation so to interpret it after conferring
with the representatives of those units which had not received
in good season the summons of the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee. A delegation sent from Smolny under the leadership of
the Bolshevik ensign, Dashkevich, briefly made known to head-
quarters the resolution of the Garrison Conference. The few rep-
resentatives of the troops present reaffirmed their loyalty to the
Soviet, but refused to make a decision and dispersed. "After a
prolonged exchange of opinions" the press so quoted the words
of headquarters "no definite decision was adopted; it was
thought necessary to await a solution of the conflict between the
Central Executive Committee and the Petrograd Soviet/* Head-
quarters thus conceived its downfall as a quarrel between two
soviet institutions as to which one should control its activities.
That policy of voluntary blindness had this advantage, that it
relieved them of the necessity of declaring war on Smolny, for
which act the rulers lacked adequate forces. Thus the revolu-
tionary conflict, already on the point of breaking out, was once
more, with the help of the governmental organs, confined within
the legal framework of the dual power. Fearing to look reality in
the face, headquarters the more loyally cooperated in camouflag-
ing the insurrection. But was not this light-minded conduct of
the powers only a camouflage for their own actual purpose? Did
not headquarters intend, under cover of this bureaucratic naivet,
to deal an unexpected blow at the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee? Such an attempt upon the part of the distraught and
demoralized organs of the Provisional Government was considered
highly improbable in Smolny. The Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee, however, took the most simple measures of precaution: in
the nearby barracks companies were kept under arms night and
day, ready at the first signal of alarm to come to the aid of
Smolny.

In spite of the calling-off of the religious procession, the
bourgeois press foretold bloodshed on Sunday. The compromisist
paper announced in its morning edition: "Today the authorities
expect a coming-out with better probability than on the 20th."

114

THE MILITAXy-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

Thus for the third time in one week the 17th, the 20th, the
22nd this naughty boy had deceived the people with a false
cry of "wolf !" The fourth time, if we can believe the old fable,
the boy will fall into the wolf's jaws. The Bolshevik press, in
summoning the masses to attend meetings, spoke of a peaceful
appraisal of revolutionary forces on the eve of the Congress of
Soviets. This fully answered the plan of the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee: to carry out a gigantic review without clashes,
without employing weapons, even without showing them. They
wanted to show the masses their own numbers, their strength, their
resolution. They wanted with unanimous numbers to compel
the enemy to hide, to keep out of sight, to stay indoors. By ex-
posing the impotence of the bourgeoisie beside their own masses,
they wanted to erase from the consciousness of the workers and
soldiers the last hindering recollections of the July Days to bring
it about that having seen themselves the masses should say: Noth-
ing and nobody can any longer oppose us.

"The frightened population," wrote Miliukov five years later,
"remained at home or stood aside." It was the bourgeoisie that
remained at home, and they really had been frightened by their
own press. All the rest of the population thronged out to meet-
ings from early morning to night young and old, men and
women, boys and girls, mothers with children in their arms. No
meetings like this had been seen before throughout the revolution.
All Petrograd, with the exception of its upper strata, was one
solid meeting. In those auditoriums, continually packed to the
doors, the audiences would be entirely renewed in the course of
a few hours. Fresh and ever fresh waves of workers, soldiers and
sailors would roll up to the buildings and flood them full. The
petty bourgeoisie of the town bestirred themselves, too, aroused
by these waves and by those warnings which were supposed to
frighten them. Tens of thousands brimmed that immense building
known as the House of the People. They filled all the theaters,
filled the auditoriums of the theaters, their smoke-rooms, buffets,
and foyers filled them with a solid and excited and at the same
time disciplined mass. From iron columns and upstairs windows
human heads, legs and arms were hanging in garlands and clusters.
There was that electric tension in the air which f orbodes a coming

115

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

discharge. Down with Kerensky! Down with the war! Power to
the Soviets! None of the Compromisers any longer dared appear
before these red hot crowds with arguments or warnings. The Bol-
sheviks had the floor. All the oratorical forces of the party,, in-
cluding delegates to the Congress who were beginning to arrive
from the provinces, were brought into action. Occasionally Left
Social Revolutionaries spoke in some places anarchists but they
both tried as little as possible to distinguish themselves from
Bolsheviks.

The people of the slums, of the attics and basements, stood
still by the hour in threadbare coat or gray uniform, with caps
or heavy shawls still on their heads, the mud of the streets soaked
through their shoes, an autumn cough catching at their throat.
They stood there packed shoulder to shoulder, and crowding ever
closer to make room for more, to make room for all, listening tire-
lessly, hungrily, passionately, demandingly, fearing lest they miss
a word of what it is so necessary to understand, to assimilate, and
to do. It had seemed as though during the months past, the weeks
at least during the very last days all the words had been
spoken. But no! Today at least those words have a different sound.
The masses are experiencing them in a new way, not as a gospel
but as an obligation to act. The experience of the revolution, the
war, the heavy struggle of a whole bitter lifetime, rose from the
deeps of memory in each of those poverty-driven men and women,
expressing itself in simple and imperious thoughts: This way we
can go no farther, we must break a road into the future.

Everyone who took part in the events here described has
subsequently turned his eyes back to that simple and wonderful
day so clearly shining out against the background of the revolu-
tion vivid enough even without that. The image of that in-
spired human flood inspired, and yet in its unconquerable power
restrained is chiseled forever in the memory of those who saw
it. "The day of the Petrograd Soviet," writes the Left Social Rev-
olutionary, Mstislavsky, "was celebrated at innumerable meet-
ings with enormous enthusiasm." The Bolshevik, Testkovsky,
who spoke at two factories of the Vassilie-Ostrov district, says:
"We spoke frankly to the masses of the coming seizure of power
by us, and heard nothing but words of encouragement." "Around

116

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

me," says Sukhanov, describing a meeting in the House of the
People, "there was a mood very near to ecstasy . . . Trotsky
had formulated some brief general resolution. . . . Those in
favor . . . Thousands and thousands raised their hands as one
man. I looked at the lifted hands and burning eyes of men, women,
boys, workers, soldiers, peasants, and of typically petty bourgeois
characters too. . . . Trotsky continued to speak. The multitude
continued to hold their hands in the air. Trotsky chiseled out each
word: Let this vote of yours be your oath. . . . The multitude
held their hands high. They agreed. They took the oath. 5 ' The
Bolshevik Popov tells of a rapturous oath sworn by the masses:
"To rush out at the first word from the Soviet." Mstislavsky
tells of an electrified crowd taking an oath of loyalty to the
Soviets. The same scene was to be observed on a smaller scale in
all parts of the city from center to suburbs. Hundreds of thou-
sands of people, at one and the same hour, lifted their hands and
took a vow to carry the struggle through to the end. The daily
meetings of the Soviet, the soldiers' section, the Garrison Con-
ference, the factory and shop committees, had given inner soli-
darity to a big group of leaders; separate mass meetings had united
the factories and regiments; but that day, the 22nd of October,
welded in one gigantic caldron and under high temperature the
authentic popular masses. The masses saw themselves and their
leaders; the leaders saw and listened to the masses. Each side was
satisfied with the other. The leaders were convinced: "We can
postpone no longer! The masses said to themselves: This time
the thing will be done!

The success of this Sunday's review of forces by the Bolsheviks
shattered the self-confidence of Polkovnikov and his high com-
mand. By agreement with the government and the Central Ex-
ecutive Committee, headquarters made an attempt to come to
terms with Smolny. "Why not after all re-establish the good old
friendly customs of contact and compromise? The Military Revo-
lutionary Committee did not refuse to send emissaries for an
exchange of opinion: A better opportunity for reconnoitering
could hardly be wished. "The negotiations were brief," remembers
Sadovsky. "The representatives of headquarters agreed in advance
to all the conditions put forth by the Soviet ... in exchange

117

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

for which the order of the Military Revolutionary Committee
for October 22 was to be annulled/* This referred to the docu-
ment declaring headquarters an instrument of the counter-
revolutionary forces. The very same emissaries whom Polkovnikov
had so discourteously sent home two days ago now demanded,
and received in their hands for the purposes of their report to
Smolny, the rough draft of an agreement signed by headquarters.
On Saturday these conditions of semi-honorable capitulation
would have been accepted. Today, on Monday, they were already
too late. Headquarters awaited an answer which never came.

The Military Revolutionary Committee addressed to the popu-
lation of Petrograd a proclamation explaining the appointment
of commissars in the military units and the most important points
of the capital and its environs. "The commissars as representatives
of the Soviet are inviolable. Opposition to the commissars is op-
position to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers* Deputies," The
citizens were invited in case of disturbances to appeal to the nearest
commissar to call out armed forces. That was the language of
sovereignty. But still the Committee did not give the signal for
open insurrection. Sukhanov asks: "Is Smolny acting stupidly, or
is it playing with the Winter Palace like a cat with a mouse, trying
to provoke an attack?" Neither the one nor the other. The Com-
mittee is crowding out the government with the pressure of the
masses, with the weight of the garrison. It is taking all that it
can without a battle. It is advancing its positions without firing,
integrating and reinforcing its army on the march. It is measur-
ing with its own pressure the resisting power of the enemy, not
taking its eyes off him for a second* Each new step forward
changes the disposition of forces to the advantage of Smolny.
The workers and the garrison are growing up to the insurrection.
Who is to be first to issue the call to arms, will become known in
the course of this offensive, this crowding out. It is now only a
question of hours. If at the last moment the government finds
the courage, or the despair, to give the signal for battle, responsi-
bility for this will lie upon the Winter Palace. But the initiative
just the same will have been taken by Smolny. Its declaration of
October 23 had meant the overthrow of the power before the
government itself was overthrown. The Military Revolutionary

118

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

Committee was tying up the arms and legs of the enemy regime
before striking him on the head. It was possible to apply this tactic
of "peaceful penetration," to break the bones of the enemy legally
and hypnotically paralyze the remnants of his will, only because
of the indubitable superiority of forces on the side of the Com-
mittee and because they were increasing hour by hour.

The Committee had been studying from day to day the map
of the garrison wide open before it. It knew the temperature of
each regiment, and followed every shift in the views and sympa-
thies of the barracks. A surprise from that side was impossible.
There remained, however, some dark shadows on the map. An
attempt must be made to eradicate, or at least decrease, them.
It had become clear on the 19th that the majority of the com-
mittees of the Peter and Paul Fortress were unfavorably, or at
least dubiously, disposed. Now when the whole garrison is for
the Committee and the fortress is caught in a ring, at least po-
litically, it is time to take decisive measures for its conquest.
Corporal Blagonravov, the commissar appointed to the fortress,
had met resistance. The governmental commandant of the fortress
had refused to recognize this Bolshevik guardianship ; there were
even rumors of his boasting that he would arrest the young
guardian. It was necessary to do something and do it quick.
Antonov offered to take a reliable battalion of the Pavlovsky
regiment into the fortress and disarm the hostile units. But that
was a too drastic operation, one which might be used by the of-
ficers to cause bloodshed and break the unity of the garrison. Was
it really necessary to adopt such extreme measures? Says Antonov
in his memoirs: "Trotsky was called in to consider this ques-
tion . . . Trotsky was then playing the decisive role. The advice
he gave us was a product of his revolutionary intuition: that we
capture the fortress from within. c lt cannot be that the troops
there are not 5ympathetic,' he said. And he was right. Trotsky
and Lashevich went to a meeting in the fortress." The results of
this enterprise, which seemed risky, were awaited in Smolny
with the greatest excitement. Trotsky subsequently wrote: "On
the 23rd I went to the fortress at about two o'clock in the after-
noon. A meeting was in progress in the court. The orators of the
Right Wing were in the highest degree cautious and evasive. . .

119

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The soldiers listened to us and they came with us." On the third
floor of Smolrxy they drew a deep breath when the telephone
brought this joyful news: The garrison of Peter and Paul has
solemnly promised to take orders henceforth only from the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee,

That change in the mood of the fortress troops was not of
course the result of one or two speeches. It had been well pre-
pared in the past. The soldiers turned out to be far to the left of
their committees. It was only the cracked shell of the old dis-
cipline that held out a little longer behind the fortress walls than
in the city barracks. One tap was enough to shatter it.

Blagonravov could now confidently establish himself in the
fortress, organize his little headquarters, and set up communica-
tions with the Bolshevik soviet of the adjoining district and the
committees of the nearest barracks. Meanwhile delegations from
the factories and military units were coming up to see what they
could do about getting weapons. An indescribable liveliness now
prevailed in the fortress, "The telephone rang continually bring-
ing news of our new successes at assemblies and mass meetings,"
Occasionally an unfamiliar voice would announce the arrival at
some railroad station of punitive detachments from the front.
Immediate investigation would reveal that this was an invention
put in circulation by the enemy.

That day the evening session of the Soviet was distinguished
by the exceptional number present and the exalted mood. The
occupation, of Peter and Paul and the conquest of the Kronverksky
arsenal containing 100,000 rifles this was no small guarantee
of success. The spokesman for the Military Revolutionary Com-
mittee was Antonov. He drew a picture of the crowding out of
the governmental organs step by step by the agents of the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee. These agents, he said, are being
received everywhere as natural authorities; they are obeyed not
through fear but through principle. "From all sides come de-
mands for the appointment of commissars." The backward units
are hurrying to catch up to the advanced. The Preobrazhensky,
which in July had been the first to fall for the slander about Ger-
man gold, had now issued through its commissar Chudnovsky a
violent protest against the rumor that the Preobrazhentsi are for

THE MILITARY-REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE

the government. The very idea is regarded as a malicious in-
sult! ... To be sure, the customary patrol duties are still being
carried out, relates Antonov, but this is done with the consent of
the Committee. Orders of headquarters for the delivery of
weapons and automobiles are not being carried out. Headquarters
thus had ample opportunity to find out who is the master of the
capital.

To a question: "Does the committee know about the move-
ment of government troops from the front and the surrounding
districts, and what measures have been taken against this?" the
spokesman answered: "Cavalry units were sent: from the Ru-
manian front, but they have been held up at Pskov; the 17th
Infantry Division, finding out on the road where and why they
had been sent, refused to go; in Venden two regiments success-
fully resisted the attempt to send them against Petrograd; we
have as yet no news about the Cossacks and junkers supposed to
have been sent from Kiev, or the shock troops summoned from
Tzarskoe-Selo. They do not dafe, and they will not dare, lay hands
on the Military Revolutionary Committee." Those words sounded
pretty good in the white hall of Smolny. As Antonov read his re-
port, one had the impression that the headquarters of the insurrec-
tion was working with wide open doors. As a matter of fact
Smolny had almost nothing to hide. The political set-up of the
revolution was so favorable that frankness itself became a kind of
camouflage: Surely this isn't the way they make an insurrection?
That word "insurrection," however, was not spoken by any one of
' the leaders. This was not wholly a formal measure of caution, for
the term did not fit the actual situation. It was being left to the
government of Kerensky, as you might say, to insurrect. In the ac-
count in Izvestia it does say that Trotsky at the session of the 23rd
first acknowledged that the aim of the Military Revolutionary
Committee was a seizure of power. It is unquestionably true that
the original attitude, when the task of the Committee had been
declared to be a testing out of the strategic arguments of Cherem-
issov, had long been abandoned. The transfer of the regiments
was indeed all but forgotten. But on the 23rd the talk was still
not about insurrection, but about the "defense" of the coming
Congress of Soviets with armed forces if necessary. It was still

121

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

in this spirit that the resolution was adopted on the report of
Antonov.

How were these events estimated in the governmental upper
circles? On the night of the 22nd, in communicating to the chief
of the headquarters staff, Dukhonin, the news of the attempt of
the Military Revolutionary Committee to get the regiments away
from the command, Kerensky added: "1 think we can easily
handle this." His own departure for headquarters was delayed,
he said, not at all through fear of any sort of an insurrection:
"That matter could be regulated without me, since everything is
organized." To his anxious ministers Kerensky reassuringly de-
clared that he personally, unlike them, was very glad of the com-
ing attack since it would give him the opportunity to "settle
once for all with the Bolsheviks, " "I would be ready to offer a
prayer/' says the head of the government to the Kadet Nabokov,
a frequent guest at the Winter Palace, "that such an attack may
occur.'* "But are you sure that you will be able to handle them?"
"I have more forces than I need. They will be stamped out for
good."

In their subsequent ridicule of this optimistic light-mindedness
of Kerensky, the Kadets have evidently been a little forgetful.
In reality Kerensky was looking at those events through their
own eyes. On the 21st, Miliukov's paper wrote that if the Bol-
sheviks, corroded as they are with a profound inner crisis, dare
to come out, they will be put down instantly and without diffi-
culty. Another Kadet paper added: "A storm is coming, but it
will perhaps clear the air." Dan testifies that in the couloirs of the
Pre-Parliament the Kadets and those grouped around them were
talking aloud of their wish that the Bolsheviks might come out
as soon as possible: "In an open battle they will be beaten to the
last man." Prominent Kadets said to John Reed: After being de-
feated in an insurrection, the Bolsheviks won't dare lift their
heads at the Constituent Assembly.

During the 22nd and 23rd Kerensky took counsel, now with
the leaders of the Central Executive Committee, now with head-
quarters: Would it not be advisable to arrest the Military Rev-
olutionary Committee? The Compromisers did not advise it: they
themselves would try to regulate the question about commissars.

122

THE 'O 1 COMMITTEE

Polkovnikov also thought it would hardly be worth while to
hasten with the arrests: the military forces in case o need are
"more than adequate." Kerensky listened to Polkovnikov, but
still more to his friends, the Compromisers. He was confidently
calculating that in case of danger the Central Executive Com-
mittee, in spite of all family misunderstandings, would come to
his aid in time. It was so in July and in August. Why should it
not continue so?

But now it is no longer July and no longer August. It is Oc-
tober. Cold and raw Baltic winds from the direction of Kron-
stadt are blowing through the squares and along the quays of
Petrograd. Junkers in long coats to their heels are patrolling the
streets, drowning their anxiety in songs of triumph. The mounted
police are riding up and down, prancing, their revolvers in brand-
new holsters. No. The power still looks imposing enough! Or is
this perhaps an optical illusion? At a corner of the Nevsky, John
Reed, an American with naive and intelligent eyes in his head,
buys a brochure of Lenin's entitled "Will the Bolsheviks Be Able
To Hold the State Power?", paying for it with one of those postage
stamps which are now circulating in place of money.

123

CHAPTER V
LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

BESIDES the factories, barracks, villages, the front and the
Soviets, the revolution had another laboratory: the brain
of Lenin. Driven underground, Lenin was obliged for a
hundred and eleven days from July 6 to October 25 to cut
down his meetings even with members of the Central Committee.
Without any immediate intercourse with the masses, and de-
prived of contacts with any organizations, he concentrated his
thought the more resolutely upon the fundamental problems of
the revolution, reducing them as was both his rule and the
necessity of his nature to the key problems of Marxism.

The chief argument of the democrats, even the most left-
ward, against seizing the power, was that the toilers were in-
capable of mastering the machinery of state. Opportunist ele-
ments even within the Bolshevik party cherished the same fears.
'The machinery of state!" Every petty bourgeois is brought up
in adoration of this mystic principle elevated above people and
above classes. And the educated philistine carries in his marrow
the same awe that his father did, or his uncle, the shopkeeper or
well-off peasant, before these all-powerful institutions where
questions of war and peace are decided, where commercial patents
are given out, whence issue the whips of the taxes, where they
punish and once in a while also pardon, where they legitimize
marriages and births, where death itself has to stand in line re-
spectfully awaiting recognition. The machinery of state! Remov-
ing in imagination not only his hat but his shoes too, the petty
bourgeois comes tip-toeing into the temple of the idol on stocking
feet it matters not what his name is, Kerensky, Laval, Mac-
Donald or Hilferding that is the way he comes when personal
good-luck or the force of circumstances makes him a minister.
Such gracious condescension he can answer only with a humble
submission before the "machinery of state." The Russian radical

124

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

intelligentsia, who had never dared crawl into the seats of power
even during the revolution except behind the backs of titled
landlords and big business men, gazed with fright and indigna-
tion upon the Bolsheviks. Those street agitators, those demagogues,
think that they can master the machinery of state!

After the Soviet, confronted by the spineless impotence of
the official democracy, had saved the revolution in the struggle
against Kornilov, Lenin wrote: "Let those of little faith learn
from this example. Shame on those who say, 'We have no machine
with which to replace that old one which gravitates inexorably to
the defense of the bourgeoisie.' For we have a machine. And that
is the Soviets. Do not fear the initiative and independence of the
masses. Trust the revolutionary organizations of the masses, and
you will see in all spheres of the state life that same power, majesty
and inconquerable will of the workers and peasants, which they
have shown in their solidarity and enthusiasm against Kornilov-
ism."

During the first months of his underground life Lenin wrote
a book The State and Revolution, the principal material for which
he had collected abroad during* the war. With the same painstak-
ing care which he dedicated to thinking out the practical prob-
lems of the day, he here examines the theoretic problems of the
state. He cannot do otherwise: for him theory is in actual fact
a guide to action. In this work Lenin has not for a jninute pro-
posed to introduce any new word into political theory. On the
contrary, he gives his work an extraordinarily modest aspect, em-
phasizing his position as a disciple. His task, he says, is to revive
the genuine "teaching of Marxism about the state."

With its meticulous selection of quotations, its detailed polemi-
cal interpretations, the book might seem pedantic to actual
pedants, incapable of feeling under the analysis of texts the
mighty pulsation of the mind and will. By a mere re-establishment
of the class theory of the state on a new and higher historical
foundation, Lenin gives to the ideas of Marx a new concreteness
and therewith a new significance. But this work on the state de-
rives its immeasurable importance above all from the fact that
it constituted the scientific introduction to the greatest revolu-
tion in history. This "commentator" of Marx was preparing his

12J

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

party for the revolutionary conquest of a sixth part of the habit-
able surface of the earth.

If the state could simply re-accommodate itself to the de-
mands of a new historic regime, revolutions would never have
arisen. As a fact, however, the bourgeoisie itself has never yet
come to power except by way of revolution. Now it is the work-
ers' turn. Upon this question, too, Lenin restored to Marxism its
significance as the theoretic weapon of the proletarian revolution.
You say the workers cannot master the machinery of state?
But it is not a question Lenin teaches of getting possession of
the old machine and using it for new aims: that is a reactionary
Utopia. The selection of personages in the old machine, their edu-
cation, their mutual relations, are all in conflict with the historic
task of the proletariat. After seizing the power our task is not
to re-educate the old machine, but to shatter it to fragments. And
with what replace it? With the Soviets. From being leaders of
the revolutionary masses, instruments of education, the Soviets
will become organs of the new state order.

In the whirlpool of the revolution this work will find few
readers; it will be published, indeed, only after the seizure of
power. Lenin is working over the problem of the state primarily
for the sake of his own inner confidence and for the future. One
of his continual concerns was to preserve the succession of ideas.
In July he writes to Kamenev: "Entre nous. If they bump me off,
I ask you to publish my little note-book Marxism on the State
(stranded in Stockholm). Bound in a blue cover. All the quota-
tions are collected from Marx and Engels, likewise from Kautsky
against Pannekoek. There is a whole series of notes and com-
ments. Formulate it. I think you could publish it with a week's
work. I think it important, for it is not only Plekhanov and
Kautsky who got off the track. My conditions: all this to be ab-
solutely entre nous*" The revolutionary leader, persecuted as the
agent of a hostile state and figuring on the possibility of attempted
assassination by his enemies, concerns himself with the publica-
tion of a "blue" note-book with quotations from Marx and Engels.
That was to be his secret last will and testament. The phrase
"bump me off" x was to serve as an antidote against that pathos

1 Vkokos&t,

126

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

which he hated, for the commission is pathetic in its very essence.

But while awaiting this blow in the back, Lenin himself was
getting ready to deliver a frontal blow. While he was putting in
order, between reading the papers and writing letters of instruc-
tion, his precious note-book procured at last from Stockholm
life did not stand still. The hour was approaching when the ques-
tion of the state was to be decided in practical action.

While still in Switzerland immediately after the overthrow
of the monarchy Lenin wrote: "We are not Blanquists, not advo-
cates of the seizure of power by a minority. . . ." This same
thought he developed on his arrival in Russia: "We are now in a
minority the masses do not trust us yet. We know how to wait.
. . . They will swing to our side, and after explaining the corre-
lation of forces we will then say to them: Our day is come. 5 ' The
question of the conquest of power was presented during those
first months as a question of winning a majority in the Soviets.

After the July raids Lenin declared: "The power can be seized
henceforth only by an armed insurrection; we must obviously
rely in this operation not upon the Soviets, demoralized by the
Compromisers, but on the factory committees; the Soviets as or-
gans of power will have to be created anew after the victory."
As a matter of fact, only two months after that the Bolsheviks
had won over the Soviets from the Compromisers. The nature
of Lenin's mistake on this question is highly characteristic of
his strategic genius :jTor the boldest designs he based his calcula-
tions upon the least favorable premise^Thus in coming to Russia
through Germany in April he counted on going straight to prison
from the station. Thus on July 5 he was saying: "They will
probably shoot us all." And thus now he was figuring: the Com-
promisers will not let us get a majority in the Soviets.

"There is no man more faint-hearted than I am, when I am
working out a military plan," wrote Napoleon to General Ber-
thier. "I exaggerate all dangers and all possible misfortunes. . . .
When my decision is taken everything is forgotten except what
can assure its success." Except for the pose involved in the inap-
propriate word faint-hearted, the essence of this thought ap-
plies perfectly to Lenin. In deciding a problem of strategy he
began by clothing the enemy with his own resolution and f ar-

127

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

sightedness. The tactical mistakes of Lenin were for the most part
by-products of his strategic power. In the present instance, in-
deed, it is hardly appropriate to use the word mistake. When a
diagnostician arrives at the definition of a disease by a method
of successive eliminations, his hypothetical assumptions, begin-
ning with the worst possible, arc not mistakes but methods of
analysis. As soon as the Bolsheviks had got control of the Soviets of
the two capitals, Lenin said: "Our day is come." In April and
July he had applied the brakes; in August he was preparing the-
oretically the new step; from the middle of September he was
hurrying and urging on with all his power. The danger now lay
not in acting too soon, but in lagging. "In this matter it is now
impossible to be premature/*

In his articles and letters addressed to the Central Committee,
Lenin analyzes the situation, always emphasizing first of all the
international conditions. The symptoms and the facts of an
awakening European proletariat are for him, on the background
of the war, irrefutable proof that the direct threat against the
Russian revolution from the side of foreign imperialism will
steadily diminish. The arrest of the socialists in Italy, and still
more the insurrections in the German fleet, made him announce
a supreme change in the whole world situation: ""We stand in
the vestibule of the world-wide proletarian revolution."

The epigone historians have preferred to hush up this starting
point of Lenin's thought both because Lenin's calculation has
been refuted by events, and because according to the most recent
theories the Russian Revolution ought to be sufficient unto itself
in all circumstances. As a matter of fact Lenin's appraisal of the
international situation was anything but illusory* The symptoms
which he observed through the screen of the military censorship
of all countries did actually portend the approach of a revolution-
ary storm. Within a year it shook the old building of the Central
Empires to its very foundation. But also in the victor countries,
England and France to say nothing of Italy it long deprived
the ruling classes of their freedom of action. Against a strong,
conservative, self-confident capitalistic Europe, the proletarian
revolution in Russia, isolated and not yet fortified, could not
have held out even for a few months. But that Europe no longer

128

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

existed. The revolution in the west did not, to be sure, put the
proletariat into power the reformists succeeded in saving the
bourgeois regime but nevertheless it proved powerful enough
to defend the Soviet Republic in the first and most dangerous
period of its life.

Lenin's deep internationalism was not expressed solely in the
fact that he always gave first place to his appraisal of the inter-
national situation. He regarded the very conquest of power in
Russia primarily as the impetus for a European revolution, a
thing which, as he often repeated, was to have incomparably more
importance for the fate of humanity than the revolution in back-
ward Russia. With what sarcasm he lashed those Bolsheviks who
did not understand their international duty. "Let us adopt a
resolution of sympathy for the German insurrectionists,'* he
mocks, "and reject the insurrection in Russia. That will be a gen-
uinely reasonable internationalism!"

In the days of the Democratic Conference, Lenin wrote to the
Central Committee: "Having got a majority in the Soviets of
both capitals . . . the Bolsheviks can and should seize the state
power in their hands. . . ." The fact that a majority of the peas-
ant delegates of the stacked Democratic Conference voted against
a coalition with the Kadets, had for him decisive significance:
The muzhik who does not want a union with the bourgeoisie has
nothing left but to support the Bolsheviks. "The people are tired
of the wavering of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.
Only our victory in the capitals will bring the peasants over to
us." The task of the party is: "To place upon the order of the day
armed insurrection in Petersburg and Moscow, conquest of
power, overthrow of the government. . . ." Up to that time no-
body had so imperiously and nakedly set the task of insurrection.

Lenin very studiously followed all the elections and votings
in the country, carefully assembling those figures which would
throw light on the actual correlation of forces. The semi-
anarchistic indifference to electoral statistics got nothing but con-
tempt from him. At the same time Lenin never identified the
indexes of parliamentarism with the actual correlation of forces.
He always introduced a correction in favor of direct action. "The
strength of a revolutionary proletariat," he explained, "from the

129

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

point of view of its action upon the masses and drawing them into
the struggle, is infinitely greater in an extra-parliamentary than
a parliamentary struggle. This is a very important observation
when it comes to the question of civil war."

Lenin with his sharp eye was the first to notice that the
agrarian movement had gone into a decisive phase, and he im-
mediately drew all the conclusions from this. The muzhik, like
the soldier, will wait no longer. "In the face of such a fact as the
peasant insurrection," writes Lenin at the end of September, "all
other political symptoms, even if they were in conflict with this
ripening of an all-national crisis, would have absolutely no sig-
nificance at all." The agrarian question is the foundation of the
revolution. A victory of the government over the peasant revolt
would be the "funeral of the revolution* . . ." We cannot hope
for more favorable conditions. The hour of action is at hand, "The
crisis is ripe. The whole future of the international workers' rev-
olution for socialism is at stake. The crisis is ripe."

Lenin summons to insurrection. In each simple, prosaic, some-
times angular line, you feel the highest tensity of passion. "The
revolution is done for," he writes early in October to the Petro-
grad party conference, "if the government of Kerensky is not
overthrown by proletarians and soldiers in the near future. , . ,
"We must mobilize all forces in order to impress upon the workers
and soldiers the unconditional necessity of a desperate, last, res-
olute struggle to overthrow the government of Kerensky,"

Lenin had said more than once that the masses are to the left
of the party. He knew that the party was to the left of its own
upper layer of "old Bolsheviks." He was too well acquainted with
the inner groupings and moods in the Central Committee to ex-
pect from it any hazardous steps whatever. On the other hand he
greatly feared excessive caution, Fabianism, a letting slip of one
of those historic situations which are decades in preparation.
Lenin did not trust the Central Committee without Lenin. In
that lies the key to his letters from underground. And Lenin was
not so wrong in his mistrust.

Being compelled in a majority of cases to express himself after
a decision had already been reached in Petrograd, Lenin was con-
tinually criticizing the policy of the Central Committee from

130

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

the left. His opposition developed with the question of insurrec-
tion as a background. But it was not limited to that. Lenin
thought that the Central Committee was giving too much atten-
tion to the compromisist Executive Committee, the Democratic
Conference, parliamentary doings in the upper soviet circles in
general. He sharply opposed the proposal of the Bolsheviks for a
coalition presidium in the Petrograd Soviet. He branded as
"shameful" the decision to participate in the Pre-Parliament. He
was indignant at the list of Bolshevik candidates for the Constitu-
ent Assembly published at the end of September. Too many in-
tellectuals, not enough workers. "To jam up the Constituent As-
sembly with orators and litterateurs will mean to travel the
worn-out road of opportunism and chauvinism. This is unworthy
of the Third International." Moreover there are too many new
names among the candidates, members of the party not tried out
in the struggle! Here Lenin considers it necessary to make an ex-
ception: "It goes without saying that . . . nobody would quarrel
with such a candidacy for example as that of L. D. Trotsky, for
in the first place Trotsky took an internationalist position im-
mediately upon his arrival; in the second place, he fought for
amalgamation among the Mezhrayontsi; in the third place, in
the difficult July Days he stood at the height of the task and
proved a devoted champion of the party of the revolutionary
proletariat. It is clear that this cannot be said of a majority of
the yesterday's party members who have been introduced into
this list. . . ."

It might seem as though the April Days had returned Lenin
again in opposition to the Central Committee. The questions stand
differently, but the general spirit of his opposition is the same:
the Central Committee is too passive, too responsive to social
opinion among the intellectual circles, too compromisist in its
attitude to the Compromisers. And above all, too indifferent,
fatalistic, not attacking a la Bolshevik the problem of the armed
insurrection.

It is time to pass from words to deeds: "Our party has now at
the Democratic Conference practically its own congress, and this
congress has got to decide (whether it wants to or not) the fate
of the revolution." Only one decision is thinkable: Armed over-

131

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

throw. In this first letter on insurrection Lenin makes another
exception: "It is not a question of 'the day* of the insurrection,
nor 'the moment' in a narrow sense. This can be decided only by
the general voice of those who are in contact with the workers
and soldiers, with the masses." But only two or three days later
(letters in those days were commonly not dated for conspirative
reasons, not through forgetfulness) Lenin, obviously impressed
by the decomposition of the Democratic Conference, insists upon
immediate action and forthwith advances a practical plan.

"We ought at once to solidify the Bolshevik faction at the
Conference, not striving after numbers. . , . We ought to draw
up a short declaration of the Bolsheviks. . . . We ought to move
our whole faction to the factories and barracks. At the same time
without losing a minute we ought to organize a staff of insurrec-
tionary detachments, deploy our forces, move the loyal regiments
into the most important positions, surround the Alexandrinka
(the theater where the Democratic Conference was sitting),
occupy Peter and Paul, arrest the General Staff and the gov-
ernment, send against the junkers and the Savage Division those
detachments which are ready to die fighting, but not let the
enemy advance to the center of the city; we ought to mobilize
the armed workers, summon them to a desperate, final battle,
occupy the telegraph and telephone stations at once, install our
insurrectionary staff at the central telephone station, placing in
contact with it by telephone all the factories, all the regiments,
all the chief points of armed struggle, etc." The question of date
is no longer placed in dependence upon the "general voice of those
who are in contact with the masses." Lenin proposed an imme-
diate act: To leave the Alexandrinsky theater with an ultimatum
and return there at the head of the armed masses. A crushing blow
is to be struck not only against the government, but also, simul-
taneously, against the highest organ of the Compromisers.

"Lenin who in private letters was demanding the arrest of the
Democratic Conference," such is the accusation of Sukhanov
"in the press, as we know, proposed a 'compromise*: Let the
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries take over the whole power
and then see what the Soviet Congress says. . . , The same idea
was insistently defended by Trotsky at the Democratic Confer-

132

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

ence and around it." Sukhanov sees a double game where there
was not the slightest hint of it. Lenin proposed an agreement to
the Compromisers immediately after the victory over Kornilov
during the first days of September. The Compromisers passed it
up with a shrug of their shoulders. They were engaged in con-
verting the Democratic Conference into a screen for a new coali-
tion with the Kadets against the Bolsheviks. With that the possi-
bility of an agreement fell away absolutely. The question of
power could henceforth be decided only in open struggle. Suk-
hanov mixes up two stages, one of which preceded the other by
two weeks and politically conditioned it.

But although the insurrection flowed inexorably from the
new coalition, nevertheless the sharpness of Lenin's change of
front took even the heads of his own party by surprise. To unite
the Bolshevik faction at the Conference on the basis of his letter,
even without "striving after numbers" was clearly impossible.
The mood of the faction was such that it rejected by seventy
votes against fifty the proposal to boycott the Pre-Parliament
the first step, that is, on the road to insurrection. In the Central
Committee itself Lenin's plan found no support whatever. Four
years later at an evening of reminiscences, Bukharin with char-
acteristic exaggerations and witticisms, gave a true account of
that episode. "The letter (of Lenin) was written with extraor-
dinary force and threatened us with all sorts of punishments.
"We all gasped. Nobody had yet posed the question so abruptly.
... At first all were bewildered. Afterwards, having talked it
over, we made a decision. Perhaps that was the sole case in the
history of our party when the Central Committee unanimously
decided to burn a letter of Lenin. . . . Although we believed
unconditionally that in Petersburg and Moscow we should suc-
ceed in seizing the power, we assumed that in the provinces we
could not yet hold out, that having seized the power and dis-
persed the Democratic Conference we could not fortify our-
selves in the rest of Russia/'

The burning of several copies of this dangerous letter, owing
to conspirative considerations, was as a matter of fact not unani-
mously resolved upon, but by six votes against four with six
abstaining. One copy, luckily for history, was preserved. But it

133

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

is true, as Bukharin relates, that all the members of the Central
Committee, although for different motives, rejected the proposal.
Some opposed an insurrection in general; others thought that the
moment of the conference was the least advantageous of all;
others simply vacillated and adopted a waiting attitude.

Having run into this direct resistance, Lenin entered into a
sort of conspiracy with Smilga, who was also in Finland and as
President of the Regional Committee of the Soviets held a toler-
able amount of real power in his hands. Smilga stood in 1917 on
the extreme left wing of the party and already in July had been
inclined to carry the struggle through to the end. At turning
points in his policy Lenin always found somebody to rely
on. On September 27 Lenin wrote Smilga a voluminous letter:
te . . . What are we doing? Only passing resolutions? "We are
losing time, we are setting "dates' (October 20 Congress of
Soviets Isn't it ridiculous to postpone this way? Isn't it ridiculous
to rely on that?) . The Bolsheviks are not carrying on a systematic
work of preparing their armed forces for the overthrow of Keren-
sky. . . . "We must agitate in the party for a serious attitude
toward armed insurrection. . . . And further, as to your
role . . . : To create a secret committee of the most loyal mili-
tary men, talk the thing over on all sides with them, collect (and
yourself verify) the most accurate information about the make-
up and position of the troops in and around Petrograd, about the
transportation of Finland troops to Petrograd, about the move-
ments of the fleet, etc." Lenin demanded "a systematic propa-
ganda among the Cossacks located here in Finland. . , . We
must study all information about the attitude of the Cossacks
and organize a sending of agitatorial detachments from our best
forces of sailors and soldiers of Finland." And finally: <e For a
correct preparation of minds we must immediately put into cir-
culation a slogan of this kind: The power must immediately pass
to the Petrograd Soviet which will hand it over to the Congress
of Soviets. For why endure three more weeks of war and of
Kornilovist preparations by Kerensky?"

In this letter we have a new plan of insurrection: A secret com-
mittee of the more important military men in Helsingfors as a
fighting staff, the Russian troops quartered in Finland as fighting

134

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

forces. "It seems that the only ones we can fully control and who
will play a serious military role are the Finland troops and the
Baltic Fleet." Thus we see that Lenin counted on dealing the chief
blow against the government from outside Petrograd. At the same
time a "correct preparation of minds" is necessary, so that an
overthrow of the government by military forces from Finland
shall not fall unexpectedly upon the Petrograd Soviet, which
until the Congress of Soviets was to be the inheritor of power.

This new draft of a plan, like the preceding one, was not re-
alized. But it did not go by without effect. The agitation among
the Cossack divisions soon gave results: we have heard about this
from Dybenko. The participation of Baltic sailors in the chief
blow against the government also entered into the plan later
adopted. But that was not the chief thing: With his extremely
sharp posing of the question Lenin permitted nobody to evade or
maneuver. What seemed untimely as a direct tactical proposal
became expedient as a test of attitudes in the Central Committee,
a support to the resolute against the wavering, a supplementary
push to the left.

With all the means at his disposal in his underground isolation
Lenin was trying to make the cadres of the party feel the acute-
ness of the situation and the strength of the mass pressure. He
summoned individual Bolsheviks to his hiding-place, put them
through partisan cross questionings, tested out the words and
deeds of the leaders, used indirect ways to get his slogans into the
party deep down in it in order to compel the Central Com-
mittee to act in the face of necessity and carry the thing through.

A day after his letter to Smilga Lenin wrote the above quoted
document The Crisis is Ripe, concluding it with something in the
nature of a declaration ' of war against the Central Committee.
"We must . . . acknowledge the truth that there is in the Cen-
tral Committee and the upper circles of the party a tendency
or an opinion in favor of waiting for the Congress of Soviets,
against the immediate seizure of power, against immediate insur-
rection." This tendency we must overcome at any cost. "Conquer
Kerensky first and then summon the Congress." To lose time wait-
ing for the Congress of Soviets is "complete idiotism or else com-
plete treachery. . . ." There remain more than twelve days until

135

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the Congress designated for the 20th: "Weeks and even days are
now deciding everything." To postpone the show-down means a
cowardly renunciation of insurrection, since during the Congress
a seizure of power will become impossible: 'They will get together
the Cossacks for the day of that stupidly 'appointed* insurrec-
tion."

The mere tone of the letter shows how ruinous the Fabianism
of the Petrograd leadership seemed to Lenin. But this time he is
not satisfied with furious criticism; by way of protest he resigns
from the Central Committee. He gives his reasons: the Central
Committee has made no response since the beginning of the Con-
ference to his insistence in regard to the seizure of power; the
editorial board of the party organ (Stalin) is printing his articles
with intentional delays, omitting from them his indication of
such "flagrant mistakes of the Bolsheviks as their shameful de-
cision to participate in the Pre-Parliament," etc. This procedure
Lenin does not consider it possible to conceal from the party: <C I
am compelled to request permission to withdraw from the Central
Committee, which I hereby do, and leave myself freedom of agi-
tation in the lower ranks of the party and at the party congress."

The documents do not show what further formal action was
taken in this matter. Lenin in any case did not withdraw from the
Central Committee. By announcing his resignation, an act which
could not possibly be with him the fruit of momentary irritation,
Lenin obviously wanted to make it possible to free himself in case
of need from the internal discipline of the Central Committee.
He could be quite sure that as in April a direct appeal to the lower
ranks would assure him the victory. But the road of open mutiny
against the Central Committee required the preparation of a spe-
cial session; it required time; and time was just what was lacking.
Keeping this announcement of his resignation in reserve, but not
withdrawing completely beyond the limits of party legality,
Lenin now continued with greater freedom to develop his offen-
sive along internal lines. His letter to the Central Committee he
not only sent to the Petrograd and Moscow committees, but he
also saw to it that copies fell into the hands of the more reliable
party workers of the district locals. Early in October and now
over the heads of the Central Committee Lenin wrote directly

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

to the Petrograd and the Moscow committees: "The Bolsheviks
have no right to await the Congress of Soviets. They ought to seize
the power right no^v. . . Delay is a crime. "Waiting for the Con-
gress of Soviets is a childish toying with formalities, a shameful
toying with formalities, betrayal of the revolution.*' From the
standpoint of hierarchical attitudes towards action, Lenin was by
no means beyond reproach, but the question here was of some-
thing bigger than considerations of formal discipline.

One of the members of the Vyborg District Committee, Sve-
shnikov, remembers: "Ilych from underground was writing and
writing untiringly, and Nadyezhda Constantinovna (Krupskaia)
often read these manuscripts to us in the district committee. . . .
The burning words of the leader would redouble our strength.
... I remember as though it were yesterday the bending figure
of Nadyezhda Constantinovna in one of the rooms of the district
administration, where the typists were working, carefully com-
paring the copy with the original, and right alongside stood Uncle
and Gene demanding a copy each." "Uncle" and "Gene" were old
conspirative pseudonyms for two leaders of the district. "Not
long ago," relates the district worker, Naumov, "we got a letter
from Ilych for delivery to the Central Committee. . . . We read
the letter and gasped. It seems that Lenin had long ago put before
the Central Committee the question of insurrection. We raised a
row. We began to bring pressure on them." It was just this that
was needed.

In the first days of October Lenin appealed to a Petrograd
party conference to speak a firm word in favor of insurrection.
Upon his initiative the conference "insistently requests the Cen-
tral Committee to take all measures for the leadership of the in-
evitable insurrection of the workers, soldiers and peasants." In
this phrase alone there are two kinds of camouflage, juridical and
diplomatic: It speaks of the leadership of an "inevitable insur-
rection" instead of the direct preparation of insurrection, in order
not to place trump cards in the hands of the district attorney;
and it "requests the Central Committee" it does not demand, and
it does not protest this in obvious deference to the prestige of
the highest institution of the party. But in another resolution,
also written by Lenin, the speech is more frank: "In the upper

137

THE TRIUMPH OP THE SOVIETS

circles of the party a wavering is to be observed, a sort of dread
of the struggle for power, an inclination to replace this struggle
with resolutions, protests, and conferences." This is already al-
most a direct pitting of the party against the Central Committee.
Lenin did not decide lightly upon such steps. But it was a ques-
tion of the fate of the revolution, and all other considerations
fell away.

On October 8, Lenin addressed the Bolshevik delegates of the
forthcoming Northern Regional Congress: "We must not await
the All-Russian Congress of Soviets which the Central Executive
Committee is able to postpone even to November, "We must not
delay and let Kerensky bring in more Kornilov troops." That
Regional Conference, at which Finland, the fleet and Reval were
represented, should take the initiative in "an immediate move
on Petrograd." The direct summons to immediate insurrection
was this time addressed to the representatives of scores of Soviets.
The summons came from Lenin personally. There was no party
decision; the higher institutions of the party had not yet expressed
themselves.

It required a mighty confidence in the proletariat, in the
party, but also a very serious mistrust of the Central Committee,
in order over its head, upon his own personal responsibility, from
underground, and by means of a few small sheets of note-paper
minutely inscribed, to raise an agitation for an armed revolution,
for an armed overthrow of the government. 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 can-
not 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 cul-
tural backwardness. To each new situation the party adapted it-
self only by way of an inner crisis.

In order that the sharp pre-October struggle in the Bolshevik
upper circles may come before us in a true light, it is necessary
again to look back at those processes in the party of which we

138

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

spoke in the first volume. This is the more necessary since exactly
at this present time the faction of Stalin is making unheard of
efforts, and that too on an international scale, to wipe out of his-
toric memory every recollection of how the October revolution
was in reality prepared and achieved.

In the years before the war the Bolsheviks had described
themselves in the legal press as "consistent democrats." This
pseudonym was not accidentally chosen. The slogans of revolu-
tionary democracy, Bolshevism and Bolshevism alone carried
through to its logical conclusion. But in its prognosis of the
revolution it did not go beyond this. The war, however, in-
separably binding up the bourgeois democrats with imperialism,
proved conclusively that the program of "consistent democracy"
could be no otherwise enacted than through a proletarian revolu-
tion. Every Bolshevik to whom the war did not make this clear
was inevitably destined to be caught unaware by the revolution,
and converted into a left fellow-traveler of the bourgeois de-
mocracy.

However, a careful study of the materials characterizing the
party life during the war and the beginning of the revolution,
notwithstanding the extreme and unprecedented scantiness of
these materials and then beginning with 1923 their increasing
disingenuousness reveals more clearly every day the immense
intellectual backsliding of the upper stratum of the Bolsheviks
during the war when the proper life of the party practically came
to an end. The cause of this backsliding is twofold: isolation from
the masses and isolation from those abroad that is primarily from
Lenin. The result was a drowning in isolation and provincialism.

Not one of the old Bolsheviks in Russia, left each to himself,
formulated throughout the whole war one document which
might be looked upon as even the tiniest beacon-light on the road
from the Second International to the Third. "The problems of
peace, the character of the coming revolution, the role of the
party in a future Provisional Government, etc." thus wrote one
of the old members of the party, Antonov-Saratovsky, some years
ago "were conceived by us vaguely enough or did not enter
into our field of reflection at all." Up to this time there has not
been published one article, not one page of a diary, not one

139

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

letter, in which Stalin, Molotov, or any other of the present lead-
ers, formulated even indirectly, even very hastily, his views upon
the perspectives of the war and the revolution. This does not
mean, of course, that the "old Bolsheviks*' wrote nothing on these
questions during the years of the war, of the collapse of the social
democracy and the preparation of the Russian revolution. These
historic events too insistently demanded an answer; jail and exile,
moreover, gave plenty of leisure for meditation and corre-
spondence. But among all that was written on these themes, not
one thing has turned up which might even with stretching be
interpreted as an approach to the ideas of the October revolution.
It is sufficient to remember that the Institute of Party History has
been forbidden to print one line from the pen of Stalin during the
years 1914-17, and has been compelled to hide carefully the
most important documents of March 1917. In the official po-
litical biographies of a majority of the present ruling stratum, the
years of the war present a vacant space. That is the unadorned
truth.

One of the most recent young historians, Bayevsky, specially
delegated to demonstrate how the upper circles of the party
developed during the war in the direction of proletarian revolu-
tion, was unable, in spite of his manifest flexibility of scientific
conscience, to squeeze out of the materials anything more than
the following meagre statement: "It is impossible to follow the
course of this process, but certain documents and memoirs in-
dubitably prove that there were subterranean searchings of the
party mind in the direction of the April theses of Lenin. . . /'
As though it were a question of subterranean searchings, and not
of scientific appraisals and political prognoses!

It was possible to arrive a priori at the ideas of the October
revolution, not in Siberia, not in Moscow, not even in Petrograd,
but only at the crossing of the roads of world history* The tasks
of a belated bourgeois revolution had to be seen intercrossing with
the perspectives of a world proletarian movement, before it could
seem possible to advance a program of proletarian dictatorship for
Russia. A higher point of observation was necessary not a
national but an international horizon to say nothing of a more

140

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

serious armament than was possessed by the so-called Russian
"practicals" of the party.

In their eyes the overthrow o the monarchy was to open
the era of a "free" republican Russia, in which they intended,
following the example of the western countries, to begin a strug-
gle for socialism. Three old Bolsheviks, Rykov, Skvortzov, and
Vegman, "at the direction of the social democrats of the Narym
district liberated by the revolution," sent a telegram in March
from Tomsk: "We send a greeting to the resurrected Pravda
which has so successfully prepared the revolutionary cadres for
the conquest of political liberty. "We express our profound con-
fidence that it will succeed in uniting all around its banner for
the further struggle in the name of the national revolution." A
whole world-philosophy emerges from this collective telegram.
It is separated by an abyss from the April theses of Lenin. The
February revolution immediately converted the leading layer of
the party, with Kamenev, Rykov and Stalin at their head, into
democratic defensists in motion, moreover, toward the right, in
the direction of a rapprochement with the Mensheviks. The fu-
ture historian of the party, Yaroslavsky, the future head of the
Central Control Commission, Ordzhonikidze, and the future
president of the Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, Petrov-
sky, published during March in Yakutsk, in close union with
the Mensheviks, a paper called the Social Democrat, which stood
on the borderland of patriotic reformism and liberalism. In re-
cent years the issues of this publication have been carefully col-
lected and destroyed.

The Petersburg Pravda tried at the beginning of the revolu-
tion to occupy an internationalist position to be sure, a very
contradictory one for it did not transcend the framework of
bourgeois democracy. The authoritative Bolsheviks arriving from
exile immediately imparted to the central organ a democratical-
patriotic policy. Kalinin, in defending himself on the 30th of
May against a charge of opportunism, recalled this fact: "Take
Pravda for example. At the beginning Pravda had one policy.
Came Stalin, Muranov, Kamenev, and turned the helm of Pravda
to the other side."

141

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

"We must frankly acknowledge/' wrote Angarsky, a mem-
ber of this stratum, when it was still permissible to write such
things, "that an enormous number of the old Bolsheviks held
fast up to the April party conference to the old Bolshevik views
of 1905 as to the character of the revolution of 1917, and that
the renunciation of these views, the outgrowing of them, was
not so easily accomplished/' It would be well to add that those
ideas of 1905, having outlived themselves, had ceased in 1917
to be "old Bolshevik views" and had become the ideas of patriotic
reformism.

"The April theses of Lenin," says an official historic publica-
tion, "just simply had no luck in the Petrograd committee. Only
two against thirteen voted for these theses, which created an
epoch, and one abstained from the vote." "Lenin's argument
seemed too bold even for his most rapturous followers/' writes
Podvoisky. Lenin's speeches in the opinion of the Petrograd
committee and the Military Organization "isolated the party of
the Bolsheviks, and thus, it goes without saying, damaged the
position of the proletariat and the party in the extreme."

""We must say frankly," wrote Molotov some years ago: "The
party lacked that clarity and resolution which the revolutionary
moment demanded. . , . The agitation and the whole revolu-
tionary party work in general had no firm foundation, since our
thoughts had not yet arrived at bold conclusions in regard to the
necessity of an immediate struggle for socialism and the socialist
revolution." The break began only in the second month of the
revolution. "From the time of Lenin's arrival in Russia in April
1917" so testifies Molotov "our party felt firm ground under
its feet. . . . Up to that moment the party was only weakly and
diffidently groping its way."

Stalin at the end of March had spoken in favor of military
defense, of conditional support to the Provisional government and
the pacifist manifesto of Sukhanov, and of merging with the
party of Tseretelli. "This mistaken position," Stalin himself ret-
rospectively acknowledged in 1924, "I then shared with other
party comrades, and I renounced it fully only in the middle of
April when I adhered to the theses of Lenin. A new orientation

142

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

was necessary. Lenin gave the party that new orientation in his
celebrated April theses."

Kalinin even at the end of April was still standing for a voting
bloc with the Mensheviks. At the Petrograd city conference of
the party Lenin said: "I am sharply opposed to Kalinin, because a
bloc with . . . chauvinists is unthinkable. . . . That is treason
to socialism." Kalinin's attitude was not exceptional even in Petro-
grad. It was said at the conference: "Under the influence of Lenin
the amalgamation fumes are dissipating."

In the provinces the resistance to Lenin's theses lasted con-
siderably longer in a number of provinces almost to October.
According to a Kiev worker, Sivtzov, "The ideas set forth in the
theses (of Lenin) were not immediately accepted by the whole
Kiev Bolshevik organization. A number of comrades, including
G. Piatakov, disagreed with the theses ..." A railroad worker
of Kharkov, Morgunov, says: "The old Bolsheviks enjoyed a great
influence among all the railroad workers. . . . Many of the old
Bolsheviks remained outside of our faction. After the February
revolution a number of them registered as Mensheviks by mis-
take, a thing at which they themselves afterwards laughed, won-
dering how it could have happened." There is no lack of this and
similar testimony.

In spite of all this, the mere mention of a re-arming of the
party carried out by Lenin in April, is regarded by the present
official historians as blasphemy. These most recent historians
have substituted for the historic criterion the criterion of honor
to the party uniform. On this theme they are deprived of the
right to quote even Stalin himself, who was obliged to acknowl-
edge the great depth of the April change. "The famous April
theses of Lenin were necessary," he wrote, "in order that the party
should come out with one bold step on a new road." "A new
orientation," "a new road" that means the re-arming of the
party. Six years later, however, Yaroslovsky, who ventured in his
capacity of historian to recall the fact that Stalin had occupied
at the beginning of the revolution "a mistaken position upon
fundamental questions" was furiously denounced from all sides.
The idol of prestige is the most gluttonous of all monsters!

143

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The revolutionary tradition of the party, the pressure of the
workers from below, and Lenin's criticism from above, com-
pelled the upper stratum during the months of April and May
employing the words of Stalin "to come out on a new road."
But one would have to be completely ignorant of political psy-
chology to imagine that a mere voting for the theses of Lenin
meant an actual and complete renunciation of the "mistaken
position on fundamental questions," In reality those crass demo-
cratic views, organically fortified during the war, merely accom-
modated themselves to the new program, remaining in silent
opposition to it.

On the 6th of August Kamcnev, contrary to the decision of
the April conference of the Bolsheviks, spoke in the Executive
Committee in favor of participating in the Stockholm conference
of the Social Patriots then in preparation, Kamenev*s speech met
no opposition in the central organ of the party. Lenin wrote a
formidable article, which appeared, however, only ten days after
Kamenev's speech. The resolute insistence of Lenin himself and
other members of the Central Committee was required to induce
the editorial staff, headed by Stalin, to publish the protesting
article.

A convulsion of doubt went through the party after the
July days. The isolation of the proletarian vanguard frightened
many leaders, especially in the provinces. During the Kornilov
days these frightened ones tried to get in contact with the Com-
promisers, which again evoked a warning cry from Lenin.

On August 20 Stalin as editor of Pravda printed without dis-
senting comment an article of Zinoviev entitled "What Not to
Do," an article directed against the preparation of an insurrection.
"We must look the truth in the face; In Petrograd there are now
many conditions favorable to the outbreak of an insurrection
of the type of the Paris Commune of 1871. , . ." On September
3, Lenin in another connection and without naming Zinoviev
but striking him an indirect blow wrote: "The reference to the
Commune is very superficial and even stupid. For in the first place
the Bolsheviks after all have learned something since 1871. They
would not fail to seize the banks, they would not renounce the
offensive against Versailles, and in these conditions even the

144

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

Commune might have succeeded. Moreover the Commune could
not immediately offer the people what the Bolsheviks can if they
come to power, namely, land to the peasants and an immediate
proposal of peace. . . ." This was a nameless but unequivocal
warning not only to Zinoviev, but also to the editor of Pravda,
Stalin.

The question of the Pre-Parliament split the Central Com-
mittee in half. The decision of the Bolshevik faction of the Con-
ference in favor of participating in the Pre-Parliament was rati-
fied by many local committees, if not a majority of them. It was
so for instance in Kiev. "On the question of ... entering the
Pre-Parliament," says E. Bosh in her memoirs, "the majority of
the committee voted for participation and elected Piatakov as its
delegate." In many cases as for example Kamenev, Rykov, Pi-
atakov and others it is possible to trace a succession of waver-
ings: against the theses of Lenin in April, against the boycott of
the Pre-Parliament in September, against the insurrection in
October. On the other hand, the next lower stratum of the Bol-
sheviks, standing nearer to the masses and being more fresh
politically, easily accepted the slogan of boycott and compelled
the committees, including the Central Committee itself, to make
an about-face. Under the influence of letters from Lenin, the city
conference of Kiev voted with an overwhelming majority against
their committee. Similarly at almost all sharp political turning
points Lenin relied upon the lower strata of the party machine
against the higher, or on the party mass against the machine as a
whole.

In these circumstances the pre-October waverings could least
of all catch Lenin unawares. He was armed in advance with a
sharp-eyed suspicion, was watching for alarming symptoms, was
making the worst possible assumptions; and he considered it more
expedient to bring excess pressure than to be indulgent.

It was at the suggestion of Lenin beyond a doubt that the
Moscow Regional Bureau adopted at the end of September a
bitter resolution against the Central Committee, accusing it of
irresolution, wavering and introducing confusion into the ranks
of the party, and demanding that it "take a clear and definite
course toward insurrection." In the name of the Moscow Bureau 3

145

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Lomov on the 3rd of October reported this decision to the Cen-
tral Committee. The minutes remark: "It was decided not to de-
bate the question." The Central Committee was still continuing to
dodge the question what to do. But Lenin's pressure, brought to
bear through Moscow, had its result: After two days the Central
Committee decided to withdraw from the Pre-Parliament.

That this step meant entering the road of insurrection was
clear to the enemies and opponents. "Trotsky in leading his army
out of the Prc-Parliament," writes Sukhanov, "was definitely
steering a course towards violent revolution/* The report of the
Petrograd Soviet on withdrawal from the Pre-Parliament ended
with the cry: "Long live the direct and open struggle for revo-
lutionary power in the country!" That was October 9th.

On the following day, upon the demand of Lenin, occurred
the famous session of the Central Committee where the question
of insurrection was flatly posed. From the beginning of that ses-
sion Lenin placed his further policy in dependence upon its out-
come: either through the Central Committee or against it. "O
new jest of the merry muse of history!" writes Sukhanov. "That
high-up and decisive session was held in my apartment, still on
the same Karpovka (32, Apartment 31). But all this was without
my knowledge." The wife of the Menshevik, Sukhanov, was a
Bolshevik. "That time special measures were taken to assure my
sleeping outside the house: at least my wife made carefully sure
of my intention, and gave me friendly and impartial advice not
to tire myself out after my work with the long journey home.
In any case the lofty assemblage was completely safe from any
invasion from me." What was more important, it proved safe
from invasions from Kerensky's police.

Twelve of the twenty-one members of the Central Committee
were present. Lenin came in wig and spectacles without a beard.
The session lasted about ten hours deep into the night. In the
intervals there were tea with bread and sausage for reinforce-
ment. And reinforcement was needed: it was a question of seiz-
ing the power in the former empire of the tzars. The session be-
gan, as always, with an organizational report from Sverdlov. This
time his communication was devoted to the front and evidently
by previous agreement with Lenin, in order to give him support

146

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

for the necessary inferences. This was quite in accord with Lenin's
methods. Representatives of the army of the northern front gave
warning through Sverdlov of preparations by the counter-
revolutionary command for some sort of "shady plot involving a
withdrawal of troops inland"; from Minsk, the headquarters of
the western front, it was reported that a new Kornilov insurrec-
tion was in preparation; in view of the revolutionary character
of the local garrison, headquarters had surrounded the city with
Cossack troops. "Some sort of negotiations of a suspicious char-
acter are in progress between headquarters and the general staff" ;
it is quite possible to seize the headquarters in Minsk: the local
garrison is ready to disarm the Cossack ring; they are also in a
position to send a revolutionary corps from Minsk to Petrograd ;
the mood on the front is for the Bolsheviks; they will go against
Kerensky. Such was Sverdlov's report. It was not in every part
sufficiently definite, but it was entirely encouraging in character.
| Lenin immediately took the off ensive :| "From the beginning
of September there has been a kind of indifference to the question
of insurrection." References are made to the cooling off and disap-
pointment of the masses. No wonder. "The masses are tired of
words and resolutions." We must take the situation as a whole.
Events in the city are now taking place against the background
of a gigantic peasant movement. The government would require
colossal forces in order to quell the agrarian insurrection. "The
political situation is thus ready. We must talk of the technical
side. That is the whole thing. Meanwhile in the manner of the
def ensists we are inclined to regard the systematic preparation of
insurrection as something in the nature of a political sin/* The
speaker was obviously restraining himself: He had too much
feeling piled up in him. "We must make use of the northern
regional congress and the proposal from Minsk in order to start a
decisive action."

The northern congress opened exactly on the day of this ses-
sion of the Central Committee, and was to close in two or three
days. The beginning of "decisive action" Lenin presented as the
task of the next days. We must not wait. We must not postpone.
On the front as we have heard from Sverdlov they are pre-
paring an overturn. Will the Congress of Soviets ever be held?

147

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

We do not know. We must seize the power immediately and not
wait for any congresses. "Never to be communicated or repro-
duced," wrote Trotsky several years later, "was the general spirit
of those tense and passionate impromptu speeches, saturated with
a desire to instil into the objecting, the wavering, the doubtful,
his thought, his will, his confidence, his courage. . . .**

Lenin expected strong resistance, but his fears were soon dis-
pelled. The unanimity with which the Central Committee had
rejected the proposal of immediate insurrection in September had
been episodic: The left wing had been against the "surrounding
of the Alexandrinka" for temporary reasons; the right for rea-
sons of general strategy, although these were not as yet thor-
oughly thought out. During the three weeks following, there had
been, a considerable shift to the left in the Central Committee.
Ten against two voted for the insurrection. That was a bxg vic-
tory!

Soon after the revolution, at a new stage in the inner party
struggle, Lenin recalled during a debate in the Petrograd com-
mittee how up to that session of the Central Committee, he "had
fears of opportunism from the side of the internationalist f usion-
ists, but these were dissipated. In our party, however, certain
members (of the Central Committee) did not agree. This grieved
me deeply." Aside from Trotsky, whom Lenin could hardly
have had in mind, the only "internationalists" in the Central
Committee were Joffe, the future ambassador in Berlin, Uritzky
the future head of the Cheka in Petrograd, and Sokolnikov, the
future inventor of the Chervonetz. All three took the side of
Lenin. His opponents were two old Bolsheviks, closest of all to
Lenin in their past work: Zinoviev and Kamenev. It is to them
he referred when he said "this grieved me very much," That ses-
sion of the 10th reduced itself almost entirely to a passionate
polemic against Zinoviev and Kamenev. Lenin led the attack,
and the rest joined in orie after the other.

The resolution, written hastily by Lenin with the gnawed
end of a pencil on a sheet of paper from a child's note-book ruled
in squares, was very unsymmetrical in architecture, but never-
theless garve firm support to the course towards insurrection. "The
Central Committee recognizes that both the international situa-

148

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

tion of the Russian revolution (the insurrection in the German
fleet, as the extreme manifestation of the growth throughout
Europe of a world-wide socialist revolution, and also the threat
of a peace between the imperialists with the aim of strangling the
revolution in Russia) and the military situation (the indubi-
table decision of the Russian bourgeoisie and Kerensky and Co.
to surrender Petersburg to the Germans) all this in connection
with the peasant insurrection and the swing of popular confi-
dence to our party (the elections in Moscow), and finally the
obvious preparation of a second Kornilov attack (the withdrawal
of troops from Petersburg, the importation of Cossacks into
Petersburg, the surrounding of Minsk with Cossacks, etc.) all
this places armed insurrection on the order of the day. Thus
recognizing that the armed insurrection is inevitable and fully
ripe, the Central Committee recommends to all organizations of
the party that they be guided by this, and from this point o
view consider and decide all practical questions (the Congress of
Soviets of the Northern Region, the withdrawal of troops from
Petersburg, the coming-out of Moscow and Minsk) ."

A remarkable thing here as characterizing both the moment
and the author is the very order in which the conditions of the
insurrection are enumerated. First comes the ripening of the
world revolution; the insurrection in Russia is regarded only as
the link in a general chain. That was Lenin's invariable starting-
point, his major premise: he could not reason otherwise. The task
of insurrection he presented directly as the task of the party. The
difficult question of bringing its preparation into accord with
the Soviets is as yet not touched upon. The All-Russian Congress
of Soviets does not get a word. To the northern regional congress
and the "coming-out of Moscow and Minsk" as points of support
for the insurrection was added, upon the insistence of Trotsky,
"the withdrawal of troops from Petersburg." This was the sole
hint of that plan of insurrection which was subsequently dictated
by the course of events in the capital. Nobody proposed any tacti-
cal amendments to the resolution, which defined only the strategi-
cal starting-point of the insurrection, as against Zinoviev and
Kamenev who rejected the very necessity of insurrection.

The very recent attempt of official historians to present this

149

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

matter as though the whole guiding stratum of the party except
Zinoviev and Kamenev stood for the insurrection, goes to pieces
when confronted by facts and documents. Aside from the fact
that those voting for insurrection were much of the time inclined
to push it off into an indefinite future, the open enemies of the
insurrection, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were not alone even in the
Central Committee. Rykov and Nogin who were absent at the
session of the 10th stood wholly upon their point of view, and
Miliutin was close to them. "In the upper circles of the party a
wavering is to be observed, a sort of dread of the struggle for
power" such is the testimony of Lenin himself. According to
Antonov-Saratovsky, Miliutin, arriving in Saratov after the
1 Oth, "told about the letter of Ilych demanding that we 'begin,*
about the waverings in the Central Committee, the preliminary
"failure* of Lenin's proposal, about his indignation, and finally
about how the course was taken towards insurrection/' The Bol-
shevik, Sadovsky, wrote later about "a certain vagueness and lack
of confidence which prevailed at that time. Even among our
Central Committee of those days, as is well known, there were
debates and conflicts about how to begin and whether to begin
at all."

Sadovsky himself was during that period one of the leaders
of the military section of the Soviet and the Military Organiza-
tion of the Bolsheviks* But it was exactly these members of the
Military Organization as appears from numerous memoirs
who were most exceptionally prejudiced in October against the
idea of insurrection. The specific character of the organization
inclined its leaders to under-estimate the political conditions and
over-estimate the technical. On the 16th of October Krylenko
reported: "The larger part of the bureau (the Military Organi-
zation) think that we should not force the issue practically, but
the minority think that we can take the initiative." On the 18th,
another prominent member of the Military Organization, Lashe-
vich, said: "Ought we not to seize the power immediately? I
think that we ought not to speed up the course of events. . * .
There is no guarantee that we will succeed in holding the power.
. . , The strategic plan proposed by Lenin limps on all four legs."
Antonov-Ovseenko tells about a meeting of the chief military

150

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

workers with Lenin: "Podvoisky expressed doubt; Nevsky at first
seconded him, but then fell into the confident tone of Ilych; I
described the situation in Finland. . . . Lenin's confidence and
firmness had a fortifying effect upon me and cheered up Nevsky,
but Podvoisky remained stubbornly dubious." We must not for-
get that in all recollections of this kind, the doubts are painted
in with water colors and the confidence in heavy oil.

Chudnovsky spoke decisively against the insurrection. The
sceptical Manuelsky warningly asserted that "the front is not
with us." Tomsky was against the insurrection. Volodarsky sup-
ported Zinoviev and Kamenev. Moreover by no means all the
opponents of the insurrection spoke openly. At a session of the
Petrograd Committee on the 15th, Kalinin said: "The resolution
of the Central Committee was one of the best resolutions ever
adopted by the Central Committee. . . . We are practically
approaching the armed insurrection. But when it will be pos-
sible perhaps a year from now is unknown." This kind of
"agreement" with the Central Committee, although perfectly
characteristic of Kalinin, was not peculiar to him. Many adhered
to the resolution in order in that way to insure their struggle
against the insurrection.

In Moscow least of all was there unanimity among the leaders.
The regional bureau supported Lenin. In the Moscow committee
there were very considerable hesitations; the prevailing mood
was in favor of delay. The provincial committee occupied an
indefinite position, but in the regional bureau, according to
Yakovleva, they thought that at the decisive moment the provin-
cial committee would swing over to the opponents of insurrec-
tion.

Lebedev from Saratov tells how in visiting Moscow not long
before the revolution, he took a walk with Rykov, and how the
latter, pointing to the stone houses, the rich stores, the business-
like excitement about them, complained of the difficulty of the
coming task. "Here in the very center of bourgeois Moscow we
really seem to be pygmies thinking of moving a mountain."

In every organization of the party, in every one of its provin-
cial committees, there were people of the same mood as Zinoviev
and Kamenev. In many committees they were the majority. Even

151

THE TRIUMPH OP THE SOVIETS

in proletarian Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where the Bolsheviks ruled
alone, the disagreement among the ruling circles took an extraor-
dinarily sharp form. In 1925, when memoirs had already accom-
modated themselves to the demands of the new course, Kisselev,
an old worker Bolshevik, wrote: "The workers* part of the party,
with the exception of certain individuals, went with Lenin.
Against Lenin, however, was a small group of party intellectuals
and solitary workers." In public discussion the opponents of in-
surrection repeated the same arguments as those of Zinoviev and
Kamenev. "But in private arguments," writes Kisselev, "the
polemic took a more acute and candid form, and here they went
so far as to say that 'Lenin is a crazy man; he is pushing the
working-class to certain ruin. From this armed insurrection we
will get nothing; they will shatter us, exterminate the party and
the working-class, and that will postpone the revolution for years
and years, etc/ " Such was the attitude of Frunze in particular,
a man of great personal courage but not distinguished by a wide
outlook.

Even the victory of the insurrection in Petrograd was far
from breaking everywhere the inertia of the waiting policy and
the direct resistance of the right wing. The wavering of the lead-
ers subsequently almost shipwrecked the insurrection in Moscow.
In Kiev, the committee headed by Piatakov, which had been
conducting a purely defensive policy, turned over the initiative
in the long run and afterward the power also to the Rada.
"The organization of our party in Voronezh," says Vrachev,
"wavered very considerably. The actual overturn in Voro-
nezh . . . was carried out not by a committee of the party, but
by its active minority with Moiseiev at the head." In a whole
series of provincial cities the Bolsheviks formed in October a bloc
with the Compromisers "against the counter-revolution." As
though the Compromisers were not at that moment one of its
chief supports! Almost everywhere a push was required both
from above and below to shatter the last indecisiveness of the
local committee, compel it to break with the Compromisers and
lead the movement. "The end of October and the beginning of
November were verily days of 'the great turmoil' in our party
Circles. Many quickly surrendered to moods." Thus reports

152

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

- if it- ii- t~ f- f j^j- j~ ^*-^-j- j~ j- ^r~*~j-^- j- j- j~_i~ j^j~_r j- j- j^^r^r- J~^T- j~ j- jr^r~-~-r- j~,j~^--^ j^_n

Shliapnikov, who himself made no small contribution to these
waverings.

All those elements which, like the Kharkov Bolsheviks, had
found themselves in the Menshevik camp in the beginning of the
revolution and afterwards themselves wondered "just how that
could have happened," found no place for themselves at all as a
general rule in the October Days but merely wavered and waited.
These people have now all the more confidently advanced their
claims as "old Bolsheviks" in the period of intellectual reaction.
In spite of the vast work that has been done in recent years
towards concealing these facts, and even without the secret
archives which are now inaccessible to the investigator, plenty of
testimony has been preserved in the newspapers, memoirs and
historic journals of that time, to prove that on the eve of the
overturn the official machine even of this most revolutionary
party put up a big resistance. Conservatism inevitably finds its
seat in a bureaucracy. The machine can fulfil a revolutionary
function only so long as it remains an instrument in the service
of the party, so long as it remains subordinate to an idea and is
controlled by the mass.

The resolution of October 10th became immensely important.
It promptly put the genuine advocates of insurrection on the
firm ground of party right. In all the party organizations, in all
its nuclei, the most resolute elements began to be advanced to the
responsible posts. The party organizations, beginning with Petro-
grad, pulled themselves together, made an inventory of their
forces and material resources, strengthened their communica-
tions, and gave a more concentrated character to the campaign
for an overturn.

But the resolution did not put an end to disagreements in the
Central Committee. On the contrary, it only formulated them
and brought them to the surface. Zinoviev and Kamenev, who
but yesterday had felt surrounded in a certain section of the
leading circles by an atmosphere of sympathy, observed with
fright how swiftly things were shifting to the left. They decided
to lose no more time, and on the very next day distributed a
voluminous address to the members of the party. "Before history,
before the international proletariat, before the Russian revolution

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

and the Russian working-class," they wrote, "we have no right
to stake the whole future at the present moment upon the card
of armed insurrection."

Their plan was to enter as a strong opposition party into the
Constituent Assembly, which "in its revolutionary work can rely
only upon the Soviets." Hence their formula: "Constituent As-
sembly and Soviets that is the combined type of state institution
toward which we are traveling." The Constituent Assembly,
where the Bolsheviks, it was assumed, would be a minority, and
the Soviets where the Bolsheviks were a majority that is, the
organ of the bourgeoisie and the organ of the proletariat were
to be "combined" in a peaceful system of dual power. That had
not succeeded even under the leadership of the Compromisers,
How could it succeed when the Soviets were Bolshevik?

"It is a profound historic error," concluded Zinoviev and
Kamenev, "to pose the question of the transfer of power to the
proletarian party either now or at any time. No, the party of
the proletariat will grow, its program will become clear to broader
and broader masses."

This hope for a further unbroken growth of Bolshevism re-
gardless of the actual course of class conflicts, crashed head on
against Lenin's leit-motif in those days: "The success of the Rus-
sian and world revolution depends upon a two or three days'
struggle."

It is hardly necessary to explain that the truth in this dramatic
dialogue was wholly on Lenin's side. A revolutionary situation
cannot be preserved at will. If the Bolsheviks had not seized the
power in October and November, in all probability they would
not have seized it at all Instead of firm leadership the masses
would have found among the Bolsheviks that same disparity be-
tween word and deed which they were already sick of, and they
would have ebbed away in the course of two or three months
from this party which had deceived their hopes, just as they had
recently ebbed away from the Social Revolutionaries and Men-
sheviks. A part of the workers would have fallen into indiffer-
entism, another part would have burned up their force in
convulsive movements, in anarchistic flare-ups, in guerrilla skir-
mishes, in a Terror dictated by revenge and despair. The

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

breathing-spell thus offered would have been used by the bour-
geoisie to conclude a separate peace with the Hohenzollern, and
stamp out the revolutionary organizations. Russia would again
have been included in the circle of capitalist states as a semi-
imperialist, semi-colonial country. The proletarian revolution
would have been deferred to an indefinite future. It was his keen
understanding of this prospect that inspired Lenin to that cry
of alarm: "The success of the Russian and world revolution de-
pends upon a two or three days' struggle. 5 *

But now, since the 10th of the month, the situation in the
party had radically changed. Lenin was no longer an isolated
"oppositionist" whose proposals were set aside by the Central
Committee. It was the Right Wing that was isolated. Lenin no
longer had to gain the right of free agitation at the price of re-
signing from the Central Committee. The party legality was on
his side. Zinoviev and Kamenev, on the other hand, circulating
their document attacking a decision adopted by the majority of
the Central Committee, were now the violators of discipline. And
Lenin in a struggle never left unpunished the oversights of his
enemy even far slighter ones than that!

At the session of the 10th, upon the proposal of Dzerzhinsky,
a political bureau of seven men was elected: Lenin, Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov, Bubnov. This new in-
stitution, however, turned out completely impracticable. Lenin
and Zinoviev were still in hiding; Zinoviev, moreover, continued
to wage a struggle against the insurrection, and so did Kamenev.
The political bureau in its October membership never once as-
sembled, and it was soon simply forgotten as were other organi-
zations created ad hoc in the whirlpool of events.

No practical plan of insurrection, even tentative, was sketched
out in the session of the 10th. But without introducing the fact
into the resolution, it was agreed that the insurrection should
precede the Congress of Soviets and begin, if possible, not later
than October Uth. Not all eagerly agreed to that date. It was
obviously too short for the take-off planned in Petrograd. But
to insist on a delay would have been to support the Right "Wing
and mix the cards. Besides, it is never too late to postpone!

The fact of this preliminary setting of the date at the 15th

155

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

was first made public in Trotsky's recollections of Lenin in 1924,
seven years after the event. The statement was soon disputed by
Stalin, and the question has become an acute one in Russian his-
toric literature. As is known, the insurrection actually occurred
only on the 25th, and consequently the date originally set was
not held to. The epigone historians consider it impossible that
there should be a mistake in the policy of the Central Committee,
or even a delay in the matter of a date, "It would follow/' writes
Stalin upon this theme, "that the Central Committee set the date
of the insurrection for October 15th and afterwards itself vio-
lated (!) this resolution, delaying the date of the insurrection
to October 25th. Is this true? No, it is not true.** Stalin comes
to the conclusion that "Trotsky's memory has betrayed him." In
proof of this he cites the resolution of October 1 Oth which did
not set any date.

This debated question of the chronology of the insurrection
is very important to an understanding of the rhythm of events
and demands clarification. That the resolution of the 10th con-
tained no date is quite true. But this general resolution had to do
with an insurrection throughout the whole country, and was
destined for hundreds and thousands of leading party workers.
To include in it the conspirative date of an insurrection to be
carried out in the next few days in Petrograd, would have been
unreasonable in the extreme. We must remember that out of
caution Lenin did not in those days even put a date on his letters.
In the given case it was a question of so important, and withal
so simple, a decision that none of the participants could have any
difficulty in remembering it especially seeing that it was a ques-
tion only of a few days. Stalin's reference to the text of the reso-
lution shows thus a complete failure to understand.

We are prepared to concede, however, that the reference of
one of the participants to his own memory, especially when his
statement is disputed by another participant, is not sufficient for
the historic investigator. Luckily the question is decided beyond
possible doubt upon another level that of an analysis of condi-
tions and documents.

The Congress of Soviets was to open on the 20th of October.
Between the session of the Central Committee and the date of

156

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

the Congress, there remained an interval of ten days. The Con-
gress was not to agitate in favor of power to the Soviets but seize
it. A few hundred delegates all by themselves, however, were
powerless to conquer the power; it was necessary to seize it for
the Congress and before the Congress. "First conquer Kerensky
and then summon the Congress" that thought had stood in the
center of Lenin's whole agitation since the middle of September.
All those agreed with it in principle who stood for the seizure of
power in general. Consequently the Central Committee could
not help setting itself the task of attempting to carry out an
insurrection between the 10th and 20th of October. And since it
was impossible to foresee how many days the struggle would last,
the beginning of the insurrection was set for the 15th. "About
the actual date/' wrote Trotsky in his recollections of Lenin,
"there was, as I remember, almost no dispute. All understood that
the date was approximate, and set, as you might say, merely for
purposes of orientation, and that it might be advanced or re-
tarded at the dictation of events. But this could be a question of
days only, and not more. The necessity of a date, and that too
a near one, was completely obvious."

This testimony of political logic essentially exhausts the ques-
tion. But there is no lack of supplementary proof. Lenin in-
sistently and frequently proposed that the party avail itself of
the Northern Regional Congress of the Soviets for the beginning
of military activities. The resolution of the Central Committee
adopted this idea. But the Regional Congress, which had opened
on the 10th, was to close just before the 15th.

At the conference on the 16th, Zinoviev, while insisting
upon the revocation of the resolution adopted six days before,
made this demand: "We must say to ourselves frankly that in the
next five days we will not make an insurrection." He was re-
ferring to the five days still remaining before the Congress of
Soviets. Kamenev, arguing at the same conference that "the ap-
pointing of an insurrection is adventurism," reminded the con-
ference that "it was said before that the action ought to come
before the 20th." Nobody objected to this statement and nobody
could object. It was the very delay of the insurrection which
Kamenev was interpreting as a failure of Lenin's resolution. Ac-

157

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

cording to his words "nothing has been done during this week"
towards an insurrection. That is obviously an exaggeration- The
setting of the date had compelled all to make their plans more
strict and hasten the tempo of their work. But it is indubitable
that the five day interval indicated at the session of the 10th had
turned out too short. The postponement was already a fact. It
was only on the 17th that the Central Executive Committee trans-
ferred the opening of the Soviet Congress to the 25th. That post-
ponement was as opportune as anything could be,

Lenin, to whom in his isolation all these inner hindrances
and frictions inevitably presented themselves in an exaggerated
form, was alarmed by the delay, and insisted upon the calling
of a new meeting of the Central Committee with representatives
from the more important branches of the party work in the
capital. It was at this conference, held on the 16th in the out-
skirts of the city, in Lesnoi, that Zinoviev and Kamenev advanced
the arguments quoted above for revoking the old date and against
naming a new.

The dispute was reopened with redoubled vigor. Miliutin's
opinion was: "We are not ready to strike the first blow. - . .
Another prospect arises: Armed conflict. ... It is growing, its
possibility is drawing near. And we ought to be ready for this
conflict. But this prospect is a different thing from insurrection."
Miliutin occupied that defensive position which was more con-
cisely defended by Zinoviev and Kamenev. Shotman, an old
Petrograd worker who lived through the whole history of the
party, has asserted that at this city conference, both in the party
committee and in the Military Revolutionary Committee, the
mood was far less militant than in the Central Committee. "We
cannot come out but we ought to get ready." Lenin attacked
Miliutin and Shotman for their pessimistic appraisal of the cor-
relation of forces: "It is not a question of a struggle with the
army, but a struggle of one part of the army with another. . . .
The facts prove that we have the advantage over the enemy.
Why cannot the Central Committee begin?"

Trotsky was not present at this meeting. During those same
hours he was carrying through the Soviet the resolution on the
Military Revolutionary Committee. But the point of view which

158

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

had firmly crystallized in Smolny during the past days was de-
fended by Krylenko, who had just been conducting hand in hand
with Trotsky and Antonov-Ovseenko the Northern Regional
Congress of Soviets. Krylenko had no doubt that "the water is
boiling hard enough." To take back the resolution in favor of
insurrection "would be the greatest possible mistake/' He dis-
agreed with Lenin, however, "on the question who shall begin
it and how it shall begin?" To set the date of the insurrection
definitely now is still inexpedient. "But the question of the re-
moval of the troops is just that fighting issue upon which the
struggle is taking place. . . . The attack upon us is thus already
a fact, and this we can make use of. ... It is not necessary to
worry about who shall begin, for the thing is already begun."
Krylenko was expounding and defending the policy laid down
by the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Garrison Con-
ference. It was along this road that the insurrection continued to
develop.

Lenin did not respond to the words of Krylenko. The living
picture of the last six days in Petrograd had not passed before
his eyes. Lenin feared delay. His attention was fixed upon the
outright opponents of insurrection. All by-remarks, conditional
formulas, inadequately categorical answers, he was inclined to
interpret as an indirect support to Zinoviev and Kamenev, who
were opposing him with the determination of people who have
burned their bridges behind them. "The week's results," argued
Kamenev, "testify that the data for an insurrection are now
lacking. We have no machine of insurrection. The enemy's ma-
chine is far stronger and has probably grown still greater during
this week. . . . Two tactics are in conflict here: the tactic of
conspiracy and the tactic of faith in the motive forces of the
Russian revolution/' Opportunists always believe in those mo-
tive forces whenever it becomes necessary to fight.

Lenin replied: "If you consider that an insurrection is right,
it is not necessary to argue about conspiracy. If an insurrection
is politically inevitable, then we must relate ourselves to insur-
rection as to an art." It was along this line that the fundamental
and really principled dispute in the party took place the dis-
pute upon whose decision, upon whose resolution one way or the

159

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

other, depended the fate of the revolution. However, within the
general frame of Lenin's formula, which united the majority of
the Central Committee, there arose subordinate, but very im-
portant, questions: How on the basis of the ripened political
situation are we to approach the insurrection? How find a bridge
from the politics to the technique of revolution? And how lead
the masses along that bridge?

Joffe, who belonged to the left wing, had supported the reso-
lution of the 10th. But he opposed Lenin in one point: "It is not
true that the question is now purely technical Now too the mo-
ment of insurrection must be considered from the political point
of view." This very last week has shown that for the party, for
the Soviet, for the masses, the insurrection has not yet become a
mere question of technique. For that very reason we failed to
keep to the date set on the 10th.

Lenin's new resolution summoning "all organizations and all
workers and soldiers to an all-sided and most vigorous prepara-
tion of armed insurrection," was adopted by 20 voices against 2,
Zinoviev and Kamenev, with 3 abstaining. The official historians
cite these figures as proof of the complete insignificance of the
opposition. But they simplify the matter. The shift to the left
in the depths of the party was already so strong that the opponents
of insurrection, not daring to come out openly, felt it to their
interest to remove any barrier of principle between the two
camps. If the overthrow, in spite of the date set before, has not
been realized by the 16th, can we not bring it about that in the
future, too, the thing will be limited to a platonic "course toward
insurrection"? That Kalinin was not so utterly alone, was very
clearly revealed in that same session. The resolution of Zinoviev to
the effect that "any action before a conference with the Bolshevik
section of the Congress of Soviets is inadmissible," was rejected
by 1 5 votes against 6, with 3 abstaining. This is where you find
the real test of opinions. Some of the "defenders" of the resolu-
tion of the Central Committee really wanted to delay the deci-
sion until the Congress of Soviets, and until a new conference
with the Bolsheviks of the provinces who were in their majority
more moderate. Of these "defenders," counting also those ab-
staining, there were 9 men out of 24 more, that is, than a third.

160

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

That, of course, is still a minority, but as a headquarters rather
an important one. The hopeless weakness of this headquarters
lay in the fact that it had no support in the lower ranks of the
party or the working-class.

On the next day Kamenev, in agreement with Zinoviev, gave
to Gorky's paper a declaration attacking the decision adopted
the night before. "Not only Zinoviev and I, but also a number
of practical comrades," thus wrote Kamenev "think that to
take the initiative in an armed insurrection at the present mo-
ment, with the given correlation of social forces, independently
of and several days before the Congress of Soviets, is an inadmis-
sible step ruinous to the proletariat and the revolution. . . . To
stake everything ... on the card of insurrection in the coming
days Would be an act of despair. And our party is too strong, it
.has too great a future before it, to take such a step. . . ." Op-
portunists always feel "too strong" to go into a fight.

Kamenev's letter was a direct declaration of war against the
Central Committee, and that too upon a question upon which
nobody was joking. The situation immediately became extraordi-
narily acute. It was complicated by several other personal epi-
sodes having a common political source. At a session of the Petro-
grad Soviet on the 18th, Trotsky, in answer to a question raised
by the enemy, declared that the Soviet had not set the date for
an insurrection in the coming days, but that if it became neces-
sary to set one, the workers and soldiers would come out as one
man. Kamenev, sitting next to Trotsky in the presidium, im-
mediately arose for a short statement: He wanted to sign his
name to Trotsky's every word. That was a cunning ruse. "Whereas
Trotsky was juridically screening a policy of attack with a spe-
ciously defensive formula, Kamenev tried to make use of Trot-
sky's formula with which he was in radical disagreement in
order to screen a directly opposite policy.

In order to annul the effect of Kamenev's maneuver, Trotsky
said on the same day in a speech to the All-Russian Conference
of Factory and Shop Committees: "A civil war is inevitable. "We
have only to organize it as painlessly as possible. We can achieve
this not by wavering and vacillation, but only by a stubborn and
courageous struggle for power." All understood that those words

161

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

about waverings were directed against Zinoviev, Kamenev and
their colleagues.

Besides that, Trotsky referred the question of Kamenev's
speech in the Soviet to investigation by the next session of the
Central Committee. In the interval Kamenev, desiring to free his
hands for agitation against the insurrection, resigned from the
Central Committee. The question was taken up in his absence.
Trotsky insisted that "the situation created is absolutely intoler-
able," and moved that Kamencv's resignation be accepted, 1

Sverdlov, supporting Trotsky's motion, read a letter of Lenin
branding Zinoviev and Kamenev as strikebreakers for their dec-
laration in Gorky's paper, and demanding their expulsion from
the party. "Kamenev's trick at the session of the Petrograd
Soviet," writes Lenin, "was something positively vile. He is in
complete accord, says he, with Trotsky! But is it hard to under-
stand that Trotsky could not, had no right, to say before the
enemy any more than he did say? Is it hard to understand
that ... a decision as to the necessity of an armed insurrection,
as to the fact that it is fully ripe, as to its all -sided preparation,
etc. . . . makes it necessary in public speeches to shoulder off
not only the blame, but also the initiative, upon the enemy. . . .
Kamenev's trick was plain petty cheating. . . /*

When sending his indignant protest through Sverdlov, Lenin
could not yet know that Zinoviev, in a letter to the editors of
the central organ, had announced that his views "arc very far
from those which Lenin combats," and that he "subscribes to
yesterday's declaration of Trotsky in the Petrograd Soviet."

1 In the minutes of the Central Committee for 19171 published in 1929, it says
that Trotsky explained his declaration to the Soviet on the ground that "it was
forced by Kamenev," Here there is obviously an erroneous record, or the record was
subsequently incorrectly edited. The declaration of Trotsky needed no special ex-
planation; it flowed from the circumstances. By a curious accident the Moscow
[Regional Committee, which wholly supported Lenin, found itself obliged to publish
in the Moscow party paper on the same day, the i8th, a declaration almost verbally
identical with the formula of Trotsky: "*We are not a conspirative party and we do
not set the date for our actions secretly. . . . When we decide to come out, we will
say so in our printed organ. . , ." It was impossible to reply otherwise to the direct
queries of the enemy. But although the declaration of Trotsky was not, and could not
have been, forced by Kamenev, it was consciously compromised by Kamenev's false
solidarity and that moreover under circumstances which deprived Trotsky of the
possibility of putting the missing dots on the i's.

162

LENIN ^ SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

Lunacharsky, a third opponent of insurrection, came out in the
press to the same effect. To complete the malicious confusion, a
letter of Zinoviev's printed in the central organ on the very day
of the session of the Central Committee, the 20th, was accom-
panied with a sympathetic remark from the editors: "We in our
turn express the hope that with the declaration made by Zinoviev
(and also the declaration of Kamenev in the Soviet) the question
may be considered settled. The sharpness of tone of Lenin's article
does not alter the fact that in fundamentals we remain of one
opinion/' That was a new blow in the back, and moreover from
a direction from which no one was expecting it. At the time when
Zinoviev and Kamenev were coming out in a hostile press with
open agitation against the decision of the Central Committee in
favor of insurrection, the central organ of the party condemns
the "sharpness" of Lenin's tone and registers its solidarity with
Zinoviev and Kamenev "in fundamentals." As though at that
moment there could be a more fundamental question than the
question of insurrection! According to the brief minutes, Trotsky
declared at the session of the Central Committee: "The letters of
Zinoviev and Lunacharsky to the central organ, and also the re-
mark of the editors are intolerable." Sverdlov supported the
protest.

The editors at that time were Stalin and Sokolnikov. The
minutes read: "Sokolnikov states that he had no part in the
declaration of the editors on the subject of Zinoviev's letter, and
considers this declaration an error." It thus became known that
Stalin personally and alone against the other member of the
editorial board and a majority of the Central Committee sup-
ported Kamenev and Zinoviev at the most critical moment, four
days before the beginning of the insurrection, with a sympathetic
declaration. The indignation at this was great.

Stalin spoke against the acceptance of Kamenev's resignation,
arguing that "our whole situation is self -contradictory." That is,
he took upon himself the defense of that confusion which the
members of the Central Committee coming out against the in-
surrection had introduced into peopled minds, Kamenev's resigna-
tion was accepted by five votes against three. By six votes, again
with Stalin opposing, a decision was adopted forbidding Kamenev

163

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

and Zinoviev to carry on a struggle against the policy of the
Central Committee. The minutes read: "Stalin announces that
he withdraws from the editorial board." In order not to compli-
cate an already difficult situation, the Central Committee refused
to accept Stalin's resignation.

This conduct on the part of Stalin might seem inexplicable
in the light of the legend which has been created around him,
In reality it fully corresponds to his spiritual mould and his
political methods. When faced by great problems Stalin always
retreats not through lack of character as in the case of Kamenev,
but through narrowness of horizon and lack of creative imagina-
tion. His suspicious caution almost organically compels him at
"moments of great decision and deep difference of opinion to retire
into the shadow, to wait, and if possible to insure himself against
both outcomes. Stalin voted with Lenin for the insurrection;
Zinoviev and Kamenev were openly fighting against the insur-
rection. But nevertheless aside from the "sharpness of tone"
of Lenin's criticism "in fundamentals we remain of one opinion."
Stalin made this editorial comment by no means through light-
mindedness. On the contrary he was carefully weighing the cir-
cumstances and the words. But on the 20th of October he did not
think it advisable to burn irrevocably his bridge to the camp of
the enemies of the uprising.

The testimony of these minutes, which we are compelled to
quote not from the original, but from the official text as worked
up by Stalin's secretariat, not only demonstrates the actual posi-
tion of the figures in the Bolshevik Central Committee, but also,
in spite of its brevity and dryhess, unfolds before us an authentic
panorama of the party leadership as it existed in reality, with all
its inner contradictions and inevitable personal waverings. Not
only history as a whole, but even its very boldest turns, are ac-
complished by people to whom nothing human is alien. But does
this after all lessen the importance of what is accomplished?

If we were to unfold on a screen the most brilliant of Na-
poleon's victories, the film would show us, side by side with
genius, scope, ingenuity, heroism, also the irresolution of indi-
vidual marshals, the confusion of generals unable to read the map,
the stupidity of officers, and the panic of whole detachments,

164

LENIN SUMMONS TO INSURRECTION

even down to the bowels relaxed with fright. This realistic docu-
ment would only testify that the army of Napoleon consisted not
of the automatons of legend, but of living Frenchmen born and
brought up during the break between two epochs. And the pic-
ture of human weaknesses would only the more plainly emphasize
the grandeur of the whole.

It is easier to theorize about a revolution afterward than
absorb it into your flesh and blood before it takes place. The
approach of an insurrection has inevitably produced, and always
will produce, crises in the insurrectionary parties. This is dem-
onstrated by the experience of the most tempered and revolu-
tionary party that history has up to this time known. It is enough
that a few days before the battle Lenin found himself obliged to
demand the expulsion from the party of his two closest and most
prominent disciples. The recent attempts to reduce this conflict
to "accidents" of a personal character have been dictated by a
purely churchly idealization of the party's past. Just as Lenin
more fully and resolutely than others expressed in the autumn
months of 1917 the objective necessity of an insurrection, and
the will of the masses to revolution, so Zinoviev and Kamenev
more frankly than others incarnated the blocking tendencies of
the party, the moods of irresolution, the influence of petty bour-
geois connections, and the pressure of the ruling classes.

If all the conferences, debates, personal quarrels, which took
place in the upper layer of the Bolshevik party during October
alone had been taken down by a stenographer, posterity might
convince itself with what intense inner struggle the determina-
tion necessary for the overthrow was crystallized among the heads
of the party. The stenographic report would show at the same
time how much a revolutionary party has need of internal democ-
racy. The will to struggle is not stored up in advance, and is not
dictated from above it has on every occasion to be inde-
pendently renewed and tempered.

Citing the assertion of the author of this book that "the party
is the fundamental instrument of proletarian revolution," Stalin
asked in 1924: "How could our revolution conquer if its 'funda-
mental instrument' was no good?" His irony did not conceal the
primitive falsity of this objection. Between the saints as the church

165

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

paints them and the devils as the candidates for sainthood por-
tray them, there are to be found living people. And it is they
who make history. The high temper of the Bolshevik party ex-
pressed itself not in an absence of disagreements, waverings, and
even quakings, but in the fact that in the most difficult circum-
stances it gathered itself in good season by means of inner crises,
and made good its opportunity to interfere decisively in the
course of events. That means that the party as a whole was a quite
adequate instrument of revolution.

In practice a reformist party considers unshakeable the foun-
dations of that which it intends to reform. It thus inevitably
submits to the ideas and morals of the ruling class. Having risen
on the backs of the proletariat, the social democrats became
merely a bourgeois party of the second order. Bolshevism created
the type of the authentic revolutionist who subordinates to his-
toric goals irreconcilable with contemporary society the condi-
tions of his personal existence, his ideas, and his moral judgments.
The necessary distance from bourgeois ideology was kept up in
the party by a vigilant irreconcilability, whose inspirer was Lenin.
Lenin never tired of working with his lancet, cutting off those
bonds which a petty bourgeois environment creates between the
party and official social opinion. At the same time Lenin taught
the party to create its own social opinion, resting upon the
thoughts and feelings of the rising class. Thus by a process of
selection and education, and in continual struggle, the Bolshevik
party created not only a political but a moral medium of its own,
independent of bourgeois social opinion and implacably opposed
to it. Only this permitted the Bolsheviks to overcome the waver-
ings in their own ranks and reveal in action that courageous de-
termination without which the October victory would have been
impossible.

166

CHAPTER VI
THE ART OF INSURRECTION

PEOPLE do not make revolution eagerly any more than they
do war. There is this difference, however, that in war com-
pulsion plays the decisive role, in revolution there is no
compulsion except that of circumstances. A revolution takes
place only when there is no other way out. And the insurrection,
which rises above a revolution like a peak in the mountain chain
of its events, can no more be evoked at will than the revolution as
a whole. The masses advance and retreat several times before
they make up their minds to the final assault.

Conspiracy is ordinarily contrasted to insurrection as the
deliberate undertaking of a minority to a spontaneous movement
of the majority. And it is true that a victorious insurrection, which
can only be the act of a class called to stand at the head of the
nation, is widely separated both in method and historic signifi-
cance from a governmental overturn accomplished by con-
spirators acting in concealment from the masses.

In every class society there are enough contradictions so that
a conspiracy can take root in its cracks. Historic experience
proves, however, that a certain degree of social disease is neces-
sary as in Spain, for instance, or Portugal, or South America
to supply continual nourishment for a regime of conspiracies. A
pure conspiracy even when victorious can only replace one clique
of the same ruling class by another or still less, merely alter the
governmental personages. Only mass insurrection has ever brought
the victory of one social regime over another. Periodical conspir-
acies are commonly an expression of social stagnation and decay,
but popular insurrections on the contrary come usually as a re-
sult of some swift growth which has broken down the old
equilibrium of the nation. The chronic "revolutions" of the South
American republics have nothing in common with the Perma-
nent Revolution; they are in a sense the very opposite thing.

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

This does not mean, however, that popular insurrection and
conspiracy are in all circumstances mutually exclusive. An ele-
ment of conspiracy almost always enters to some degree into any
insurrection. Being historically conditioned by a certain stage in
the growth of a revolution, a mass insurrection is never purely
spontaneous. Even when it flashes out unexpectedly to a majority
of its own participants, it has been fertilized by those ideas in
which the insurrectionaries see a way out of the difficulties of
existence. But a mass insurrection can be foreseen and prepared.
It can be organized in advance. In this case the conspiracy is
subordinate to the insurrection, serves it, smoothes its path,
hastens its victory. The higher the political level of a revolu-
tionary movement and the more serious its leadership, the greater
will be the place occupied by conspiracy in a popular insurrection.

It is very necessary to understand the relations between in-
surrection and conspiracy, both as they oppose and as they sup-
plement each other. It is especially so, because the very use of the
word conspiracy, even in Marxian literature, contains a super-
ficial contradiction due to the fact that it sometimes implies an
independent undertaking initiated by the minority, at others a
preparation by the minority of a majority insurrection.

History testifies, to be sure, that in certain conditions a popu-
lar insurrection can be victorious even without a conspiracy.
Arising "spontaneously" out of the universal indignation, the
scattered protests, demonstrations, strikes, street fights, an in-
surrection can draw in a part of the army, paralyze the forces of
the enemy, and overthrow the old power. To a certain degree
this is what happened in February 1917 in Russia. Approximately
the same picture is presented by the development of the German
and Austro-Hungarian revolutions of the autumn of 1918.
Since in these events there was no party at the head of the in-
surrectionaries imbued through and through with the interests
and aims of the insurrection, its victory had inevitably to trans-
fer the power to those parties which up to the last moment had
been opposing it.

To overthrow the old power is one thing; to take the power
in one's own hands is another. The bourgeoisie may win the power
in a revolution not because it is revolutionary, but because it is

168

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

bourgeois. It has in its possession property, education, the press,
a network of strategic positions, a hierarchy of institutions. Quite
otherwise with the proletariat. Deprived in the nature of things
of all social advantages, an insurrectionary proletariat can count
only on its numbers, its solidarity, its cadres, its official staff.

Just as a blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in his
naked hand, so the proletariat cannot directly seize the power;
it has to have an organization accommodated to this task. The
coordination of the mass insurrection with the conspiracy, the
subordination of the conspiracy to the insurrection, the organiza-
tion of the insurrection through the conspiracy, constitutes that
complex and responsible department of revolutionary poli-
tics which Marx and Engels called "the art of insurrection." It
presupposes a correct general leadership of the masses, a flexible
orientation in changing conditions, a thought-out plan of at-
tack, cautiousness in technical preparation, and a daring blow.

Historians and politicians usually give the name of spon-
taneous insurrection to a movement of the masses united by a
common hostility against the old regime, but not having a clear
aim, deliberated methods of struggle, or a leadership consciously
showing the way to victory. This spontaneous insurrection is
condescendingly recognized by official historians at least those
of democratic temper as a necessary evil the responsibility for
which falls upon the old regime. The real reason for their attitude
of indulgence is that "spontaneous" insurrection cannot tran-
scend the framework of the bourgeois regime.

The social democrats take a similar position. They do not
reject revolution at large as a social catastrophe, any more than
they reject earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, eclipses and epi-
demics of the plague. "What they do reject calling it "Blan-
quism," or still worse, Bolshevism is the conscious preparation
of an overturn, the plan, the conspiracy. In other words, the
social democrats are ready to sanction and that only ex post
facto those overturns which hand the power to the bour-
geoisie, but they implacably condemn those methods which
might alone bring the power to the proletariat. Under this pre-
tended objectivism they conceal a policy of defense of the cap-
italist society.

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

From his observations and reflections upon the failure of the
many insurrections he witnessed or took part in, Auguste Blanqui
derived a number of tactical rules which if violated will make the
victory of any insurrection extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Blanqui demanded these things: a timely creation of correct
revolutionary detachments, their centralized command and ade-
quate equipment, a well calculated placement of barricades, their
definite construction, and a systematic, not a mere episodic, de-
fense of them. All these rules, deriving from the military prob-
lems of the insurrection, must of course change with social con-
ditions and military technique, but in themselves they are not by
any means "Blanquism" in the sense that this word approaches
the German "putschism," or revolutionary adventurism.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts it has its laws. The
rules of Blanqui were the demands of a military revolutionary
realism. Blanqui's mistake lay not in his direct but his inverse
theorem. From the fact that tactical weakness condemns an in-
surrection to defeat, Blanqui inferred that an observance of the
rules of insurrectionary tactics would itself guarantee the victory.
Only from this point on is it legitimate to contrast Blanquism
with Marxism. Conspiracy does not take the place of insurrec-
tion. An active minority of the proletariat, no matter how well
organized, cannot seize the power regardless of the general con-
ditions of the country. In this point history has condemned
Blanquism. But only in this. His affirmative theorem retains all
its force. In order to conquer the power, the proletariat needs
more than a spontaneous insurrection. It needs a suitable organ-
ization, it needs a plan ; it needs a conspiracy. Such is the Leninist
view of this question.

Engels' criticism of the fetishism of the barricade was based
upon the evolution of military technique and of technique in
general. The insurrectionary tactic of Blanquism corresponded
to the character of the old Paris, the semi-handicraft proletariat,
the narrow streets and the military system of Louis Philippe.
Blanqui's mistake in principle was to identify revolution with in-
surrection. His technical mistake was to identify insurrection
with the barricade. The Marxian criticism has been directed
against both mistakes. Although at one with Blanquism in re-

170

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

garding insurrection as an art, Engels discovered not only the
subordinate place occupied by insurrection in a revolution, but
also the declining role of the barricade in an insurrection. Engels'
criticism had nothing in common with a renunciation of the
revolutionary methods in favor of pure parliamentarism, as the
philistines of the German Social Democracy, in cooperation with
the Hohenzollern censorship, attempted in their day to pretend.
For Engels the question about barricades remained a question
about one of the technical elements of an uprising. The reform-
ists have attempted to infer from his rejection of the decisive
importance of the barricade a rejection of revolutionary violence
in general. That is about the same as to infer the destruction of
militarism from considerations of the probable decline in impor-
tance of trenches in future warfare.

The organization by means of which the proletariat can both
overthrow the old power and replace it, is the Soviets. This after-
wards became a matter of historic experience, but was up to
the October revolution a theoretical prognosis resting, to be
sure, upon the preliminary experience of 1905. The Soviets are or-
gans of preparation of the masses for insurrection, organs of in-
surrection, and after the victory organs of government.

However, the Soviets by themselves do not settle the ques-
tion. They may serve different goals according to the program
and leadership. The Soviets receive their program from the party.
Whereas the Soviets in revolutionary conditions and apart from
revolution they are impossible comprise the whole class with
the exception of its altogether backward, inert or demoralized
strata, the revolutionary party represents the brain of the class.
The problem of conquering the power can be solved only by a
definite combination of party with Soviets or with other mass
organizations more or less equivalent to Soviets.

When headed by a revolutionary party the soviet consciously
and in good season strives towards a conquest of power. Accom-
modating itself to changes in the political situation and the mood
of the masses, it gets ready the military bases of the insurrection,
unites the shock troops upon a single scheme of action, works
out a plan for the offensive and for the final assault. And this
means bringing organized conspiracy into mass insurrection.

171

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

The Bolsheviks were compelled more than once, and long be-
fore the October revolution, to refute accusations of conspiratism
and Blanquism directed against them by their enemies. More-
over, nobody waged a more implacable struggle against the
system of pure conspiracy than Lenin. The opportunists of the
international social democracy more than once defended the old
Social Revolutionary tactic of individual terror directed against
the agents of tzarism, when this tactic was ruthlessly criticized by
the Bolsheviks with their insistence upon mass insurrection as
opposed to the individual adventurism of the intelligentsia. But
in refuting all varieties of Blanquism and anarchism, Lenin did
not for one moment bow down to any "sacred" spontaneousness
of the masses. He thought out before anybody else, and more
deeply, the correlation between the objective and subjective
factors in a revolution, between the spontaneous movement and
the policy of the party, between the popular masses and the
progressive class, between the proletariat and its vanguard, be-
tween the Soviets and the party, between insurrection and con-
spiracy.

But if it is true that an insurrection cannot be evoked at
will, and that nevertheless in order to win it must be organized
in advance, then the revolutionary leaders are presented with a
task of correct diagnosis. They must feel out the growing insur-
rection in good season and supplement it with a conspiracy. The
interference of the midwife in labor pains however this image
may have been abused remains the clearest illustration of this
conscious intrusion into an elemental process. Herzen once ac-
cused his friend Bakunin of invariably in all his revolutionary
enterprises taking the second month of pregnancy for the ninth.
Herzen himself was rather inclined to deny "even in the ninth
that pregnancy .existed. In February the question of determining
the date of birth hardly arose at all, since the insurrection flared
up unexpectedly without centralized leadership. But exactly for
this reason the power did not go to those who had accomplished
the insurrection, but to those who had applied the brakes. It
was quite otherwise with the second insurrection. This was con-
sciously prepared by the Bolshevik party. The problem of cor-

172

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

rectly seizing the moment to give the signal for the attack was
thus laid upon the Bolshevik staff.

Moment here is not to be taken too literally as meaning a
definite day and hour. Physical births also present a considerable
period of uncertainty their limits interesting not only to the
art of the midwife, but also to the casuistics of the Surrogate's
Court. Between the moment when an attempt to summon an in-
surrection must inevitably prove premature and lead to a revolu-
tionary miscarriage, and the moment when a favorable situation
must be considered hopelessly missed, there exists a certain period
it may be measured in weeks, and sometimes in a few months
in the course of which an insurrection may be carried out with
more or less chance of success. To discriminate this comparatively
short period and then choose the definite moment now in the
more accurate sense of the very day and hour for the last blow,
constitutes the most responsible task of the revolutionary leaders.
It can with full justice be called the key problem, for it unites
the policy of revolution with the technique of insurrection and
it is needless to add that insurrection, like war, is a continua-
tion of politics with other instruments.

Intuition and experience are necessary for revolutionary
leadership, just as for all other kinds of creative activity. But
much more than that is needed. The art of the magician can also
successfully rely upon intuition and experience. Political magic is
adequate, however, only for epochs and periods in which routine
predominates. An epoch of mighty historic upheavals has no use
for witch-doctors. Here experience, even illumined by intuition,
is not enough. Here you must have a synthetic doctrine com-
prehending the interactions of the chief historic forces. Here you
must have a materialistic method permitting you to discover,
behind the moving shadows of program and slogan, the actual
movement of social bodies.

The fundamental premise of a revolution is that the existing
social structure has become incapable of solving the urgent
problems of development of the nation. A revolution becomes
possible, however, only in case the society contains a new class
capable of taking the lead in solving the problems presented by

173

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

history. The process of preparing a revolution consists of making
the objective problems involved in the contradictions of industry
and of classes find their way into the consciousness of living
human masses, change this consciousness and create new correla-
tions of human forces.

The ruling classes, as a result of their practically manifested
incapacity to get the country out of its blind alley, lose faith in
themselves; the old parties fall to pieces; a bitter struggle of groups
and cliques prevails; hopes are placed in miracles or miracle
workers. All this constitutes one of the political premises of a
revolution, a very important although a passive one.

A bitter hostility to the existing order and a readiness to
venture upon the most heroic efforts and sacrifices in order to
bring the country out upon an upward road this is the new
political consciousness of the revolutionary class, and constitutes
the most important active premise of a revolution.

These two fundamental camps, however the big property
holders and the proletariat do not exhaust the population of a
country. Between them lie broad layers of the petty bourgeoisie,
showing all the colors of the economic and political rainbow. The
discontent of these intermediate layers, their disappointment with
the policy of the ruling class, their impatience and indignation,
their readiness to support a bold revolutionary initiative on the
part of the proletariat, constitute the third political premise of a
revolution. It is partly passive in that it neutralizes the upper
strata of the petty bourgeoisie but partly also active, for it
impels the lower strata directly into the struggle side by side
with the workers.

That these premises condition each other is obvious. The more
decisively and confidently the proletariat acts, the better will it
succeed in bringing after it the intermediate layer, the more
isolated will be the ruling class, and the more acute its demoraliza-
tion. And, on the other hand, a demoralization of the rulers will
pour water into the mill of the revolutionary class.

The proletariat can become imbued with the confidence neces-
sary for a governmental overthrow only if a clear prospect opens
before it, only if it has had an opportunity to test out in action a
correlation of forces which is changing to its advantage, only if it

174

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

feels above it a far-sighted, firm and confident leadership. This
brings us to the last premise by no means the last in importance
of the conquest of power: the revolutionary party as a tightly
welded and tempered vanguard of the class.

Thanks to a favorable combination of historic conditions
both domestic and international, the Russian proletariat was
headed by a party of extraordinary political clarity and un-
exampled revolutionary temper. Only this permitted that small
and young class to carry out a historic task of unprecedented
proportions. It is indeed the general testimony of history the
Paris Commune, the German and Austrian revolutions of 1918,
the soviet revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria, the Italian revolu-
tion of 1919, the German crisis of 1923, the Chinese revolution
of 1925-27, the Spanish revolution of 1931 that up to now
the weakest link in the chain of necessary conditions has been the
party. The hardest thing of all is for the working-class to create
a revolutionary organization capable of rising to the height of its
historic task. In the older and more civilized countries powerful
forces work toward the weakening and demoralization of the
revolutionary vanguard. An important constituent part of this
work is the struggle of the social democrats against "Blanquism,"
by which name they designate the revolutionary essence of
Marxism.

Notwithstanding the number of great social and political
crises, a coincidence of all the conditions necessary to a victorious
and stable proletarian revolution has so far occurred but once in
history: in Russia in October 1917. A revolutionary situation is
not long-lived. The least stable of the premises of a revolution is
the mood of the petty bourgeoisie. At a time of national crisis
the petty bourgeoisie follows that class which inspires confidence
not only in words but deeds. Although capable of impulsive en-
thusiasm and even of revolutionary fury, the petty bourgeoisie
lacks endurance, easily loses heart under reverses, and passes from
elated hope to discouragement. And these sharp and swift changes
in the mood of the petty bourgeoisie lend their instability to every
revolutionary situation. If the proletarian party is not decisive
enough to convert the hopes and expectations of the popular
masses into revolutionary action in good season, the flood tide is

175

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

quickly followed by an ebb: the intermediate strata turn away
their eyes from the revolution and seek a savior in the opposing
camp. And just as at flood tide the proletariat draws after it the
petty bourgeoisie, so during the ebb the petty bourgeoisie draws
after it considerable layers of the proletariat. Such is the dialectic
of the communist and fascist waves observable in the political
evolution of Europe since the war.

Attempting to ground themselves upon the assertion of Marx
that no regime withdraws from the stage of history until it has
exhausted all its possibilities, the Mensheviks denied the legiti-
macy of a struggle for proletarian dictatorship in backward Rus-
sia where capitalism had far from exhausted itself. This argument
contained two mistakes, both fatal Capitalism is not a national
but a world-wide system. The imperialist war and its consequences
demonstrated that the capitalist system had exhausted itself on
a world scale. The revolution in Russia was a breaking of the
weakest link in the system of world-wide capitalism.

But the falsity of this Menshevik conception appears also
from a national point of view. From the standpoint of economic
abstraction, it is indeed possible to affirm that capitalism in
Russia has not exhausted its possibilities. But economic processes
do not take place in the ether, but in a concrete historical medium.
Capitalism is not an abstraction, but a living system of class
relations requiring above all things a state power. That the
monarchy, under whose protection Russian capitalism developed,
had exhausted its possibilities is not denied even by the Menshe-
viks. The February revolution tried to build up an intermediate
state regime. "We have followed its history: in the course of eight
months it exhausted itself completely, What sort of state order
could in these conditions guarantee the further development of
Russian capitalism?

"The bourgeois republic, defended only by socialists of mod-
erate tendencies, finding no longer any support in the masses
. , . could not maintain itself. Its whole essence had evaporated.
There remained only an external shell." This accurate definition
belongs to Miliukov. The fate of this evaporated system was neces-
sarily, according to his words, the same as that of the tzarist

176

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

monarchy: "Both prepared the ground for a revolution, and on
the day of revolution neither could find a single defender."

As early as July and August Miliukov characterized the situa-
tion by presenting a choice between two names: Kornilov or
Lenin? But Kornilov had now made his experiment and it had
ended in a miserable failure. For the regime of Kerensky there
was certainly no place left. With all the varieties of mood, says
Sukhanov, "the one thing upon which all united was hate for the
Kerensky regime." Just as the tzarist monarchy had toward the
end become impossible in the eyes of the upper circle of the
nobility and even the grand dukes, so the government of Keren-
sky became odious even to the direct inspiritors of his regime, the
"grand dukes" of the compromisist upper crust. In this universal
dissatisfaction, this sharp political nerve-tension of all classes,
we have one of the symptoms of a ripe revolutionary situation. In
the same way every muscle, nerve and fiber of an organism is in-
tolerably tensed just before an abscess bursts.

The resolution of the July congress of the Bolsheviks, while
warning the workers against premature encounters, had at the
same time pointed out that the battle must be joined "whenever
the general national crisis and the deep mass enthusiasm have
created conditions favorable to the going over of the poor people
of the city and country to the side of the workers," That moment
arrived in September and October.

The insurrection was thenceforth able to believe in its success,
for it could rely upon a genuine majority of the people. This, of
course, is not to be understood in a formal sense. If a referendum
could have been taken on the question of insurrection, it would
have given extremely contradictory and uncertain results. An
inner readiness to support a revolution is far from identical with
an ability clearly to formulate the necessity of it. Moreover, the
answer would have depended to a vast degree upon the manner
in which the question was presented, the institution which con-
ducted the referendum or, to put it more simply, the class which
held the power.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods.
You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they

177

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether
to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident
threatens. If the saving operation is carried out skilfully how-
ever, and in time, the approval of the passengers is guaranteed in

advance.

Parliamentary consultations of the people are carried out at a
single moment, whereas during a revolution the different layers
of the population arrive at the same conclusion one after another
and with inevitable, although sometimes very slight, intervals.
At the moment when the advanced detachment is burning with
revolutionary impatience, the backward layers have only begun
to move. In Petrograd and Moscow all the mass organizations were
under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. In Tambov province,
which has over three million population that is, a little less than
both capitals put together a Bolshevik faction first appeared in
the soviet only a short time before the October revolution.

The syllogisms of the objective development are far from
coinciding day by day with the syllogisms of the thought
process of the masses. And when a great practical decision becomes
unpostponable, in the course of events, that is the very moment
when a referendum is impossible. The difference in level and mood
of the different layers of the people is overcome in action. The
advance layers bring after them the wavering and isolate the
opposing. The majority is not counted up, but won over. In-
surrection comes into being at exactly that moment when direct
action alone offers a way out of the contradictions.

Although lacking the power to draw by themselves the neces-
sary political inferences from their war against the landlords,
the peasants had by the very fact of the agrarian insurrection
already adhered to the insurrection of the cities, had evoked it
and were demanding it. They expressed their will not with the
white ballot, but with the red cock a more serious referendum.
Within those limits in which the support of the peasantry was
necessary for the establishment of a soviet dictatorship, the sup-
port was already at hand. "The dictatorship" as Lenin answered
the doubters "would give land to the peasants and all power
to the peasant committees in the localities. How can you in your
right mind doubt that the peasant would support that dictator -

178

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

ship?" In order that the soldiers, peasants and oppressed nation-
alities, floundering in the snow-storm of an elective ballot should
recognize the Bolsheviks in action, it was necessary that the Bol-
sheviks seize the power.

But what correlation of forces was necessary in order that
the proletariat should seize the power? "To have at the decisive
moment, at the decisive point, an overwhelming superiority of
force, " wrote Lenin later, interpreting the October revolution,
" this law of military success is also the law of political success,
especially in that seething and bitter war of classes which is called
revolution. The capitals, or generally speaking, the biggest centers
of trade and industry . . . decide to a considerable degree the
political fate of the people that is, of course, on condition that
the centers are supported by sufficient local rural forces, al-
though this support need not be immediate." It was in this
dynamic sense that Lenin spoke of the majority of the people,
and that was the sole real meaning of the concept of majority.

The enemy democrats comforted themselves with the thought
that the people following the Bolsheviks were mere raw material,
mere historic clay. The potters were still to be these same demo-
crats acting in cooperation with the educated bourgeoisie. "Can't
those people see," asked a Menshevik paper, "that the Petrograd
proletariat and garrison were never before so isolated from all
other social strata?' 9 The misfortune of the proletariat and the
garrison was that they were "isolated" from those classes from
whom they intended to take the power!

But was it really possible to rely upon the sympathy and
support of the dark masses in the provinces and at the front?
"Their Bolshevism," wrote Sukhanov scornfully, "was nothing
but hatred for the coalition and longing for land and peace."
As though that were little! Hatred for the coalition meant a de-
sire to take the power from the bourgeoisie. Longing for land and
peace was the colossal program which the peasant and soldier
intended to carry out under the leadership of the workers. The
insignificance of the democrats, even the most leftward, resulted
from this very distrust the distrust of "educated" sceptics in
those dark masses who grasp a phenomenon wholesale, not bother-
ing about details and nuances. This intellectual, pseudo-

179

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

aristocratic, squeamish attitude toward the people was foreign to
Bolshevism, hostile to its very nature. The Bolsheviks were not
lily-handed, literary friends of the masses, not pedants. They were
not afraid of those backward strata now for the first time lifting
themselves out of the dregs. The Bolsheviks took the people as
preceding history had created them, and as they were called to
achieve the revolution. The Bolsheviks saw it as their mission to
stand at the head of that people. Those against the insurrection
were "everybody" except the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks
were the people.

The fundamental political force of the October revolution was
the proletariat, and the first place in its ranks was occupied by
the workers of Petrograd. In the vanguard of these workers stood
the Vyborg district. The plan of the insurrection chose this
fundamental proletarian district as the point of departure for its
offensive.

Compromisers of all shades, beginning with Martov, at-
tempted after the revolution to portray Bolshevism as a soldier
movement. The European social democrats grabbed up this theory
with delight. But fundamental historic facts were here ignored:
the fact that the proletariat was the first to come over to the
Bolsheviks; that the Petrograd workers were showing the road
to the workers of all countries; that the garrison and front much
longer than the workers remained bulwarks of compromisism;
that the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks created all kinds
of privileges for the soldier at the expense of the worker in the
soviet system, struggled against the arming of the workers and
incited the soldiers against them; that the break in the troops was
brought about only by the influence of workers; that at the de-
cisive moment the leadership of the soldiers was in the hands of
the workers; and finally that a year later the social democrats of
Germany, following the example of their Russian colleagues,
relied on the soldiers in their struggle against the workers.

By autumn the Right Compromisers had ceased even to be
able to make speeches in the factories and barracks. But the Lefts
were still trying to convince the masses of the madness of in-
surrection. Martov, who in the struggle against the counter-
revolutionary offensive in July had found a path to the minds

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

of tlie masses, was now again serving a hopeless cause. "We can-
not expect" he himself acknowledged on the 14th of October,
at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee "We cannot
expect the Bolsheviks to listen to us." Nevertheless he considered
it his duty to "warn the masses." The masses, however, wanted
action and not moral admonition. Even where they did patiently
listen to their well-known adviser, they "thought their own
thoughts as before," as Mstislavsky acknowledges. Sukhanov tells
how he made an effort in a drizzling rain to convince the Putilov
men that they could fix things up without an insurrection. Im-
patient voices interrupted him. They would listen for two or
three minutes and interrupt again. "After a few attempts I gave
it up," he says. "It was no use . . . and the rain was drizzling
down on us heavier and heavier/* Under that impatient October
sky the poor Left Democrats, even as described in their own
writings, look like wet hens.

The favorite political argument of the "Left 5 * opponents of
the revolution and this even among the Bolsheviks was a
reference to the absence of fighting enthusiasm among the lower
ranks. "The mood of the laboring and soldier masses," write
Zinoviev and Kamenev on October llth, "is far from compar-
able even to the mood which existed before the 3rd of July." This
assertion was not unfounded: there was a certain depression in
the Petrograd proletariat as a result of waiting too long. They
were beginning to feel disappointed even in the Bolsheviks: Can
it be that they are going to cheat us too? On October 1 6th Rakhia,
one of the fighting Petrograd Bolsheviks, a Finn by birth, said
at a conference of the Central Committee: "Our slogan is evi-
dently already getting a little out of date, for there exists a doubt
as to whether we will do the thing for which we are calling." But
this weariness of waiting, which looked like listlessness, lasted
only up to the first fighting signal.

The first task of every insurrection is to bring the troops over
to its side. The chief means of accomplishing this are the general
strike, mass processions, street encounters, battles at the barri-
cades. The unique thing about the October revolution, a thing
never before observed in so complete a form, was that, thanks to
a happy combination of circumstances, the proletarian vanguard

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

had won over the garrison of the capital before the moment of
open insurrection. It had not only won them over, but had forti-
fied this conquest through the organization of the Garrison Con-
ference. It is impossible to understand the mechanics of the Octo-
ber revolution without fully realizing that the most important
task of the insurrection, and the one most difficult to calculate in
advance, was fully accomplished in Petrograd before the begin-
ning of the armed struggle.

This does not mean, however, that insurrection had become
superfluous. The overwhelming majority of the garrison was, it
is true, on the side of the workers. But a minority was against
the workers, against the revolution, against the Bolsheviks. This
small minority consisted of the best trained elements in the army:
the officers, the junkers, the shock battalions, and perhaps the
Cossacks. It was impossible to win these elements politically; they
had to be vanquished. The last part of the task of the revolution,
that which has gone into history under the name of the October
insurrection, was therefore purely military in character. At this
final stage rifles, bayonets, machine guns, and perhaps cannon,
were to decide. The party of the Bolsheviks led the way on this
road.

What were the military forces of the approaching conflict?
Boris Sokolov, who directed the military work of the Social
Revolutionary party, says that in the period preceding the over-
turn "in the regiments all the party organizations except those of
the Bolsheviks had disintegrated, and conditions were not at all
favorable to the organization of new ones. The mood of the
soldiers was tending definitely toward the Bolsheviks. But their
Bolshevism was passive and they lacked any tendency whatever
toward active armed movements." Sokolov does not fail to add:
"One or two regiments wholly loyal and capable of fighting would
have been enough to hold the whole garrison in obedience." Lit-
erally all of them, from the monarchist generals to the "socialistic"
intelligentsia, wanted only those "one or two regiments" and they
would have put down the proletarian revolution! But it is quite
true that the garrison, although deeply hostile to the government
in its overwhelming mass, was not capable of fighting even on
the side of the Bolsheviks. The cause of this lay in the hostile

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

break between the old military structure of the troops, and their
new political structure. The backbone of a fighting unit is its
commanding staff. The commanding staffs were against the Bol-
sheviks. The political backbone of the troops was composed of
Bolsheviks. The latter, however, not only did not know how to
command, but in the majority of cases hardly knew how to handle
a gun. The soldier crowd was not homogeneous. The active fight-
ing elements were, as always, a minority. The majority of the
soldiers sympathized with the Bolsheviks, voted for them, elected
them, but also expected them to decide things. The elements
hostile to the Bolsheviks in the troops were too insignificant to
venture upon any initiative whatever. The political condition of
the garrison was thus exceptionally favorable for an insurrection.
But its fighting weight was not large that was clear from the
beginning.

However, it was not necessary to dismiss the garrison entirely
from the military count. A thousand soldiers ready to fight on
the side of the revolution were scattered here and there among
the more passive mass, and for that very reason more or less
drew it after them. Certain individual units, more happily con-
stituted, had preserved their discipline and fighting capacity.
Strong revolutionary nuclei were to be found even in the dis-
integrating regiments. In the Sixth Reserve Battalion, consisting
of about 10,000 men, out of five companies, the first invariably
distinguished itself, being known as Bolshevik almost from the
beginning of the revolution and rising to the heights in the Octo-
ber days. The typical regiments of the garrison did not really
exist as regiments; their administrative mechanism had broken
down; they were incapable of prolonged military effort; but
they were nevertheless a horde of armed men a majority of whom
had been under fire. All the units were united by a single senti-
ment: Overthrow Kerensky as soon as possible, disperse, and go
home and institute a new land system. Thus that completely de-
moralized garrison was to rally once more in the October days,
and rattle its weapons suggestively, before completely going to
pieces.

What force did the Petersburg workers offer from a military
point of view? This raises the question of the Red Guard. It is

183

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

time to speak of this in greater detail, for the Red Guard is soon
to come out on the great arena of history.

Deriving its tradition from 1905, the Workers 5 Guard was re-
born with the February revolution and subsequently shared the
vicissitudes of its fate. Kornilov, while Commander of the Petro-
grad military district, asserted that during the days of the over-
throw of the monarchy 30,000 revolvers and 40,000 rifles
disappeared from the military stores. Over and above that, a con-
siderable quantity of weapons came into the possession of the
people during the disarming of the police and by the hands of
friendly regiments. Nobody responded to the demand to restore
the weapons. A revolution teaches you to value a rifle. The
organized workers, however, had received only a small part of
this blessing.

During the first four months the workers were not in any way
confronted with the question of insurrection. The democratic
regime of the dual power gave the Bolsheviks an opportunity to
win a majority in the Soviets. Armed companies of workers formed
a constituent part of the militia. This was, however, more form
than substance. A rifle in the hands of a worker involves a totally
different historic principle than the same rifle in the hands of a
student.

The possession of rifles by the workers alarmed the possessing
classes from the very beginning, since it shifted the correlation
of forces sharply to the advantage of the factory. In Petrograd,
where the state apparatus supported by the Central Executive
Committee was at first an indubitable power, the "Workers'
Militia was not much of a menace. In the provincial indus-
trial regions, however, a reinforcement of the Workers' Guard
would involve a complete change of all relations, not only
within the given plant but all around it. Armed workers would
remove managers and engineers, and even arrest them. Upon
resolutions adopted by a factory meeting the Red Guard would
not infrequently receive pay out of the factory exchequer. In the
Urals, with their rich tradition of guerrilla fighting in 1905, com-
panies of the Red Guard led by the old veterans established law
and order. Armed workers almost unnoticeably dissolved the old
government and replaced it with soviet institutions. Sabotage on

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

the part of the property owners and administrators shifted to the
workers the task of protecting the plants the machines, stores,
reserves of coal and raw materials. Roles were here interchanged:
the worker would tightly grip his rifle in defense of the factory
in which he saw the source of his power. In this way elements of
a workers* dictatorship were inaugurated in the factories and
districts some time before the proletariat as a whole seized the
state power.

Reflecting as always the fright of the property owners, the
Compromisers tried with all their might to oppose the arming of
the Petrograd workers or reduce it to a minimum. According to
Minichev, all the arms in the possession of the Narva district con-
sisted of "fifteen or twenty rifles and a few revolvers." At that
time robberies and deeds of violence were increasing in the cap-
ital. Alarming rumors were spreading everywhere heralding new
disturbances. On the eve of the July demonstration it was gen-
erally expected that the district would be set fire to. The work-
ers were hunting for weapons, knocking at all doors and some-
times breaking them in.

The Putilov men brought back a trophy from the demonstra-
tion of July 3rd: a machine gun with five cases of cartridge-belt.
"We were happy as children," said Minichev. Certain individual
factories were somewhat better armed. According to Lichkov, the
workers of his factory had 80 rifles and 20 big revolvers. Riches
indeed! Through the Red Guard headquarters they got two
machine guns. They put one in the dining room, one in the
attic. "Our commander," says Lichkov, "was Kocherovsky, and
his first assistants were Tomchak, who was killed by White
Guards in the October days near Tzarskoe Selo, and Efimov, who
was shot by White bands near Hamburg." These scant words
enable us to glance into the factory laboratory where the cadres
of the October revolution and the future Red Army were form-
ing, where the Tomchaks and Efimovs were being chosen out,
tempered, and were learning to command, and with them those
hundreds and thousands of nameless workers who won the power,
loyally defended it from its enemy, and fell subsequently on all
the fields of battle.

The July Days introduced a sudden change in the situation of

185

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the Red Guard. The disarming of the workers was now carried
out quite openly not by admonition but by force. However,
what the workers gave up as weapons was mostly old rubbish. All
the very valuable guns were carefully concealed. Rifles were dis-
tributed among the most reliable members of the party. Machine
guns smeared with tallow were buried in the ground. Detach-
ments of the Guard closed up shop and went underground,
closely adhering to the Bolsheviks.

The business of arming the workers was originally placed in
the hands of the factory and district committees of the Party.
It was only after the recovery from the July Days that the Mili-
tary Organization of the Bolsheviks, which had formerly worked
only in the garrison and at the front, took up the organization of
the Red Guard, providing the workers with military instructors
and in some cases with weapons. The prospect of armed insurrec-
tion put forward by the party gradually prepared the advanced
workers for a new conception of the function of the Red Army.
It was no longer a militia of the factories and workers* districts,
but the cadres of a future army of insurrection.

During August, fires in the shops and factories multiplied.
Every new crisis is preceded by a convulsion of the collective
mind, sending forth waves of alarm. The factory and shop com-
mittees developed an intense labor of defending the plants from
attacks of this kind. Concealed rifles came out into the open.
The Kornilov insurrection conclusively legalized the Red Guard.
About 25,000 workers were enrolled in companies and armed
by no means fully, to be sure with rifles, and in part with
machine guns. Workers from the Schliisselberg powder factory
delivered on the Neva a bargef ul of hand grenades and explosives
against Kornilov! The compromisist Central Executive Com-
mittee refused this gift of the Greeks! The Red Guards of the
Vyborg side distributed the gift by night throughout the dis-
trict.

"Drill in the art of handling a rifle," says the worker Skorinko,
"formerly carried on in flats and tenements, was now brought
out into the light and air, into the parks, the boulevards." "The
shops ^were turned into camps," says another worker, Rakitov.
. * . "The worker would stand at his bench with knapsack on

186

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

his back and rifle beside him." Very soon -all those working in the
bomb factory except the old Social Revolutionaries and Menshe-
viks were enrolled in the Guard. After the whistle all would draw
up in the court for drill. "Side by side with a bearded worker
you would see a boy apprentice, and both of them attentively
listening to the instructor. . . ." Thus while the old tzarist army
was disintegrating, the foundation of a future Red Army was
being laid in the factories.

As soon as the Kornilov danger passed, the Compromisers
tried to slow up on the fulfilment of their promises. To the 30,-
000 Putilov men, for instance, only 500 rifles were given out.
Soon the giving out of weapons stopped altogether. The danger,
now was not from the right, but the left; protection must be
sought not among the proletarians but the junkers.

An absence of immediate practical aims combined with the
lack of weapons caused an ebbing of workers from the Red
Guard, but this only for a short interval. The foundation cadres
had been laid down solidly in every plant; firm bonds had been
established between the different companies. These cadres now
knew from experience that they had serious reserves which could
be brought to their feet in case of danger.

The going over of the Soviet to the Bolsheviks again radically
changed the position of the Red Guard. From being persecuted
or tolerated, it now became an official instrument of the Soviet
already reaching for the power. The workers now often found
by themselves a way to weapons, asking only the sanction of the
Soviet. From the end of September on, and more especially from
the 10th of October, the preparation of an insurrection was openly
placed on the order of the day. For a month before the revolu-
tion in scores of shops and factories of Petrograd an intense mili-
tary activity was in progress chiefly rifle practice. By the mid-
dle of October the interest in weapons had risen to a new height.
In certain factories almost every last man was enrolled in a
company.

The workers were more and more impatiently demanding
weapons from the Soviet, but the weapons were infinitely fewer
than the hands stretched out for them. "I came to Smolny every
day," relates the engineer, Kozmin, "and observed how both be-

187

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

fore and after the sitting of the Soviet, workers and sailors would
come up to Trotsky, offering and demanding weapons for the
arming of the workers, making reports as to how and where these
weapons were distributed, and putting the question: 'But when
does business begin?' The impatience was very great. . . ."

Formally the Red Guard remained non-party. But the nearer
the final day came, the more prominent were the Bolsheviks.
They constituted the nucleus of every company; they controlled
the commanding staff and the communications with other plants
and districts. The non-party workers and Left Social Revolution-
aries followed the lead of the Bolsheviks.

However, even now, on the eve of the insurrection, the ranks
of the Guard were not numerous. On the 16th, Uritzky, a mem-
ber of the Bolshevik Central Committee, estimated the workers'
army of Petrograd at 40,000 bayonets. The figure is probably
exaggerated. The resources of weapons remained still very lim-
ited. In spite of the impotence of the government it was impos-
sible to seize the arsenals without taking the road of open in-
surrection.

On the 22nd, there was held an all-city conference of the Red
Guard, its hundred delegates representing about twenty thousand
fighters. The figure is not to be taken too literally not all those
registered had shown any signs of activity. But at a moment of
alarm volunteers would pour into the companies in large numbers.
Regulations adopted the next day by the conference defined the
Red Guard as "an organization of the armed forces of the pro-
letariat for the struggle against counter-revolution and the de-
fense of the conquests of the revolution." Observe this: that
twenty-four hours before the insurrection the task was still de-
fined in terms of defense and not attack.

The basic military unit was the ten; four tens was a squad,
three squads, a company; three companies, a battalion. With its
commanding staff and special units, a battalion numbered over
500 men. The battalions of a district constituted a division. 1 Big
factories like the Putilov had their own divisions. Special technical
commands sappers, bicyclers, telegraphers, machine-gunners
and artillery men were recruited in the corresponding fac-

1 Otryad.

188

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

tories, and attached to the riflemen or else acted independently
according to the nature of the given task. The entire commanding
staff was elective. There was no risk in this: all were volunteers
here and knew each other well.

The working women created Red Cross divisions. At the shops
manufacturing surgical supplies for the army, lectures were an-
nounced on the care of the wounded. "Already in almost all the
factories," writes Tatiana Graff, "the working women were
regularly on duty as nurses with the necessary first-aid supplies."
The organization was extremely poor in money and technical
equipment. By degrees, however, the factory committees sent
material for hospital bases and ambulances. During the hours of
the revolution these weak nuclei swiftly developed. An imposing
technical equipment was suddenly found at their disposal. On the
24th the Vyborg district soviet issued the following order: "Im-
mediately requisition all automobiles. . . . Take an inventory of
all first-aid supplies, and have nurses on duty in all clinics."

A growing number of non-party workers were now going
out for shooting drill and maneuvers. The number of posts re-
quiring patrol duty was increasing. In the factories sentries were
on duty night and day. The headquarters of the Red Guard were
transferred to more spacious rooms. On the 23rd at a pipe
foundry they held an examination of the Red Guard. An attempt
of a Menshevik to speak against the insurrection was drowned in
a storm of indignation: Enough, enough! The time for argument
is passed! The movement was irresistible. It was seizing even the
Mensheviks. "They were enrolling in the Red Guard," says
Tatiana Graff, "participating in all duties and even developing
some initiative." Skorinko tells how on the 23rd, Social
Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, old and young, were fraterniz-
ing with the Bolsheviks, and how Skorinko himself joyfully em-
braced his own father who was a worker in the same factory. The
worker Peskovoi says that in his armed detachment "there were
young workers of sixteen and old men of fifty." The variety of
ages gave "good cheer and fighting courage."

The Vyborg side was especially fervent in preparing for battle.
Having stolen the keys of the drawbridges, studied out the
vulnerable points of the district, and elected their military-

189

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

revolutionary committee, the factory committees established con-
tinuous patrols. Kayurov writes with legitimate pride of the
Vyborg men: "They were the first to go to battle with the au-
tocracy, they were the first to institute in their district the
eight -hour day, the first to come out with a protest against
the ten minister-capitalists, the first to raise a protest on July
7th against the persecution of our party, and they were not the
last on the decisive day of October 25th." What is true is true!

The history of the Red Guard is to a considerable extent the
history of the dual power. With its inner contradictions and con-
flicts, the dual power helped the workers to create a considerable
armed force even before the insurrection. To cast up the general
total of the workers 3 detachments throughout the country at
the moment of insurrection is hardly possible, at least at the
present moment. In any case, tens and tens of thousands of armed
workers constituted the cadres of the insurrection. The reserves
were almost inexhaustible.

The organization of the Red Guard remained, of course, ex-
tremely far from complete. Everything was done in haste, in
the rough, and not always skilfully. The Red Guard men were
in the majority little trained; the communications were badly
organized; the supply system was lame; the sanitary corps lagged
behind. But the Red Guard, recruited from the most self-
sacrificing workers, was burning to carry the job through this
time to the end. And that was the decisive thing. The difference
between the workers' divisions and the peasant regiments was
determined not only by the social ingredients of the two many
of those clumsy soldiers after returning to their villages and
dividing the landlords" land will fight desperately against the
White Guards, first in guerrilla bands and afterwards in the Red
Army. Beside the social difference there existed another more
immediate one: Whereas the garrison represented a compulsory
assemblage of old soldiers defending themselves against war, the
divisions of the Red Guard were newly constructed by individ-
ual selection on a new basis and with new aims.

The Military Revolutionary Committee had at its disposal
a third kind of armed force: the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. In
their social ingredients they are far closer to the workers than

190

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

the infantry are. There are a good many Petrograd workers
among them. The political, level of the sailors is incomparably
higher than that of the soldiers. In distinction from the none too
belligerent reserves who have forgotten all about rifles, these
sailors have never stopped actual service.

For active operations it was possible to count firmly upon
the armed Bolsheviks, upon the divisions of the Red Guard, upon
the advanced group of the sailors, and upon the better preserved
regiments. The different elements of this collective army sup-
plemented each other. The numerous garrisons lacked the will
to fight. The sailor detachments lacked numbers. The Red Guard
lacked skill. The workers together with the sailors contributed
energy, daring and enthusiasm. The regiments of the garrison
constituted a rather inert reserve, imposing in its numbers and
overwhelming in its mass.

In contact as they were from day to day with workers, sol-
diers and sailors, the Bolsheviks were aware of the deep qualita-
tive difference between the constituent parts of this army they
were to lead into battle. The very plan of the insurrection was
based to a considerable degree upon a calculation of these differ-
ences.

The possessing classes constituted the social force of the other
camp. This means that they were its military weakness. These
solid people of capital, the press, the pulpit where and when
have they ever fought? They are accustomed to find out by tele-
graph or telephone the results of the battles which settle their
fate. The younger generation, the sons, the students? They were
almost all hostile to the October revolution. But a majority of
them too stood aside. They stood with their fathers awaiting the
outcome of the battle. A number of them afterward joined the
officers and junkers already largely recruited from among the
students. The property holders had no popular masses with them.
The workers, soldiers, peasants had turned against them. The col-
lapse of the compromise parties meant that the possessing classes
were left without an army.

In proportion to the significance of railroads in the life of
modern states, a large place was occupied in the political calcula-
tions of both camps by the question of the railroad workers* Here

191

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

the hierarchical constitution of the personnel leaves room for an
extraordinary political variegation, creating favorable condi-
tions for the diplomats of the Compromisers. The lately formed
Vikzhel had kept a considerably more solid root among the clerks
and even among the workers than, for instance, the army com-
mittees at the front. In the railroads only a minority followed the
Bolsheviks, chiefly workers in the stations and yards. According
to the report of Schmidt, one of the Bolshevik leaders of the
trade union movement, the railroad workers of the Petrograd
and Moscow junctions stood closest of all to the party.

But even among the compromisist mass of clerks and work-
ers there was a sharp shift to the left from the date of the rail-
road strike at the end of September. Dissatisfaction with the
Vikzhel, which had compromised itself by talking and waver-
ing, was more and more evident in the lower ranks. Lenin re-
marked: "The army of railroad and postal clerks continues in a
state of sharp conflict with the government." From the stand-
point of the immediate tasks of the insurrection that was al-
most enough.

Things were less favorable in the post and telegraph service.
According to the Bolshevik, Boky, "the men in the Post and
Telegraph Offices are mostly Kadets/* But here too the lower
personnel had taken a hostile attitude toward the upper ranks.
There was a group of mail carriers ready at a critical moment to
seize the Post Office.

It would have been hopeless in any case to try to change the
minds of the railroad and postal clerks with words. If the Bol-
sheviks should prove indecisive, the advantage would remain
with the Kadets and the compromisist upper circles. With a de-
cisive revolutionary leadership the lower ranks must inevitably
carry with them the intermediate layers, and isolate the upper
circles of the Vikzhel. In revolutionary calculations statistics
alone are not enough; the co-efficient of living action is also
essential.

The enemies of the insurrection in the ranks of the Bolshevik
party itself found, however, sufficient ground for pessimistic con-
clusions. Zinoviev and Kamenev gave warning against an under-
estimation of the enemy's forces. "Petrograd will decide, and in

192

THE ART OF INSURRECTION

Petrograd the enemy has ... considerable forces: 5,000 junk-
ers, magnificently armed and knowing how to fight, and then
the army headquarters, and then the shock troops, and then the
Cossacks, and then a considerable part of the garrison, and then
a very considerable quantity of artillery spread out fan-wise
around Petrograd. Moreover the enemy with the help of the Cen-
tral Executive Committee will almost certainly attempt to bring
troops from the front. . . ." The list sounds imposing, but it
is only a list. If an army as a whole is a copy of society, then
when society openly splits, both armies are copies of the two
warring camps. The army of the possessors contained the worm-
holes of isolation and decay.

The officers crowding the hotels, restaurants and brothels
had been hostile to the government ever since the break between
Kerensky and Kornilov. Their hatred of the Bolsheviks, how-
ever, was infinitely more bitter. As a general rule, the monarchist
officers were most active on the side of the government. "Dear
Kornilov and Krymov, in what you failed to do perhaps with
God's help we shall succeed. ..." Such was the prayer of officer
Sinegub, one of the most valiant defenders of the Winter Palace
on the day of the uprising. But in spite of the vast number of
officers, only single individuals were really ready to fight. The
Kornilov plot had already proven that these completely demoral-
ized officers were not a fighting force.

The junkers were not homogeneous in social make-up, and
there was no unanimity among them. Along with hereditary
fighters, sons and grandsons of officers, there were many acci-
dental elements gathered up under pressure of war-needs even
during the monarchy. The head of an engineering school said
to an officer: "I must die with you. . . , We are nobles, you
know, and cannot think otherwise." These lucky gentlemen,
who did after all succeed in evading a noble death, would speak
of the democratic junkers as low-breeds, as muzhiks "with coarse
stupid faces." This division into the blue blood and the black
penetrated deeply into the junker schools, and it is noticeable
that here too those who came out most zealously in defense of
the republican government were the very ones who most
mourned the loss of the monarchy. The democratic junkers de-

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

clared that they were not for Kerensky but for the Central
Executive Committee. The revolution had first opened the doors
of the junker schools to the Jews. And in trying to hold their own
with the privileged upper circles, the sons of the Jewish bour-
geoisie became extraordinarily warlike against the Bolsheviks.
But, alas, this was not enough to save the regime not even to
defend the Winter Palace. The heterogeneousness of these mili-
tary schools and their complete isolation from the army brought
it about that during the critical hours the junkers began to hold
meetings. They began to ask questions: How are the Cossacks
behaving? Is anybody coming out besides us? Is it worth while
anyway to defend the Provisional Government? According to a
report of Podvoisky, there were about 120 socialist junkers in
the Petrograd military schools at the beginning of October, and
of these 42 or 43 were Bolsheviks. "The junkers say that the whole
commanding staff of the schools is counter-revolutionary. They
are being definitely prepared in case anything happens to put
down the insurrection. . . /' The number of socialists, and es-
pecially Bolsheviks, was wholly insignificant, but they made it
possible for Smolny to know everything of importance that went
on among the junkers. In addition to that, the location of the
military schools was very disadvantageous. The junkers were
sandwiched in among the barracks, and although they spoke
scornfully of the soldiers, they looked upon them with a great
deal of dread.

The junkers had plenty of ground for caution. Thousands
of hostile eyes were watching them from the neighboring bar-
racks and the workers' districts. This observation was the more
effective in that every school had its soldier group, neutral in
words but in reality inclining toward the insurrection. The school
storerooms were in the hands of non-combatant soldiers. "Those
scoundrels/* writes an officer of the Engineering School, "not
satisfied with losing the key to the storeroom so that I had to
give orders to break in the door, also removed the breech-locks
from the machine guns and hid them somewhere." In these cir-
cumstances you could hardly expect miracles of heroism from
the junkers.

But would not a Petrograd insurrection be threatened from

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

without, from the neighboring garrisons? In the last days of its
life the monarchy had never ceased to put its hope in that small
military ring surrounding the capital. The monarchy had missed
its guess, but how would it go this time? To guarantee condi-
tions excluding every possible danger would have been to make
the very insurrection unnecessary. After all, its aim was to break
down the obstacles which could not be dissolved politically.
Everything could not be calculated in advance, but all that could
be, was.

Early in October a conference of the Soviets of Petrograd
province was held in Kronstadt. Delegates from the garrisons
of the environs of the capital Gatchina, Tzarskoe, Krasnoe,
Oranienbaum, Kronstadt itself took the very highest note set
by the tuning-fork of the Baltic sailors. Their resolution was
adhered to by the deputies of Petrograd province. The muzhiks
were veering sharply through the Left Social Revolutionaries
toward the Bolsheviks.

At a conference of the Central Committee on the 16th, a
party worker in the province, Stepanov, drew a somewhat varie-
gated picture of the state of the forces, but nevertheless with a
clear predominance of Bolshevik colors. In Sestroretsk and Kol-
pino the workers are under arms; their mood is militant. In Novy
Peter hoflf the work in the regiment has fallen off; the regiment
is disorganized. In Krasnoe Selo the 176th regiment is Bolshevik
(the same regiment which patrolled the Tauride Palace on July
4th), the 172nd is on the side of the Bolsheviks, "and, besides,
there is cavalry there." In Luga the garrison of 30,000, after
swinging over to the Bolsheviks, is wavering in part; the soviet
is still defensist. In Gdov the regiment is Bolshevik. In Kronstadt
the mood has declined; the garrison boiled over during the pre-
ceding months; the better part of the sailors are in the active
fleet. In Schliisselburg, within 60 versts of Petrograd, the soviet
long ago became the sole power; the workers of the powder fac-
tory are ready at any moment to support the capital.

In combination with the results of that Kronstadt conference
of Soviets, this information about the first line reserves may be
considered entirely encouraging. The radiation of the February
insurrection had been sufficient to dissolve discipline over a wide

195

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

area. And it was now possible to look with confidence upon the
nearby garrisons, their conditions being adequately known in
advance.

The troops of Finland and the northern front were among
the second line reserves. Here conditions were still more favor-
able. The work of Smilga, Antonov, Dybenko had produced in-
valuable results. Along with the garrison of Helsingf ors the fleet
had become a sovereign in Finnish territory. The government
had no more power there. The two Cossack divisions quartered
in Helsingf ors Kornilov had intended them for a blow at Petro-
grad had come in close contact with the sailors and were sup-
porting the Bolsheviks, or the Left Social Revolutionaries, who in
the Baltic Fleet were becoming less and less distinguishable from
Bolsheviks.

Helsingfors was extending its hands to the sailors of the
Reval naval base, whose attitude up to that time had been in-
definite. The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, in
which also apparently the Baltic Fleet had taken the initiative,
had united the Soviets of the garrisons surrounding Petrograd in
such a wide circle that it took in Moscow on one side and Arch-
angel on the other. "In this manner," writes Antonov, "the idea
was realized of armoring the capital of the revolution against
possible attacks from Kerensky's troops." Smilga returned from
the Congress to Helsingfors to organize a special detachment of
sailors, infantry and artillery to be sent to Petrograd at the first
signal. The Finland flank of the Petrograd insurrection was thus
protected to the last degree. On this side no blow was to be ex-
pected, only strong help. On other portions of the front, too,
things were wholly favorable at least far more favorable than
the most optimistic of the Bolsheviks in those days imagined.
During October committee elections were held throughout the
army, and everywhere they showed a sharp swing to the Bol-
sheviks. In the corps quartered near Dvinsk the "old reasonable
soldiers" were completely snowed under in the elections to the
regimental and company committees; their places were taken
by "gloomy, gray creatures . . . with angry piercing eyes and
wolfish snouts." The same thing happened in other sectors. "Com-

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

mittee elections are in progress everywhere, and everywhere only
Bolsheviks and defeatists are elected." The governmental commis-
sars began to avoid making trips to their units. "Their situation
is now no better than ours." We are quoting Baron Budberg. Two
cavalry regiments of his corps, the Hussar and Ural Cossacks,
who remained longest of all in the control of the commanders,
and had not refused to put down mutinous units, suddenly
changed color and demanded "that they be relieved of the func-
tion of punitive troops and gendarmes." The threatening sense
of this warning was clear to the Baron and to everybody else.
"You can't command a flock of hyenas, jackals and sheep by
playing on a violin/' he wrote. "The only salvation lies in a mass
application of the hot iron. . . ." And here follows the tragic
confession: "... a thing which we haven't got and is nowhere
to be gotten."

If we do not cite similar testimony about other corps and
divisions, it is only because their chiefs were not so observant
as Budberg, or they did not keep diaries, or these diaries have
not yet come to light. But the corps standing near Dvinsk was
distinguished in nothing but the trenchant style of its com-
mander from the other corps of the 5th Army, which in its turn
was but little in advance of the other armies.

The compromisist committee of the 5th Army, which had
long been hanging in the air, continued to send telegraphic
threats to Petrograd to the effect that it would restore order in
the rear with the bayonet. "All that was mere braggadoccio and
hot air," writes Budberg. The committee was actually living its
last days. On the 23rd it failed of re-election. The president of
the new Bolshevik committee was Doctor Skliansky, a magnifi-
cent young organizer who soon developed his talent widely in
the work of creating the Red Army, and who died subsequently
an accidental death while canoeing on one of the American lakes.

The assistant of the government Commissar of the Northern
Front reports to the War Minister on the 22nd of October that
the ideas of Bolshevism are making great headway in the army,
that the mass wants peace, and that even the artillery which has
held out to the very last moment has become "hospitable to de-

197

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

featist propaganda/* This too is no unimportant symptom. "The
Provisional Government has no authority" reports its own di-
rect agent three days before the revolution.

To be sure, the Military Revolutionary Committee did not
then know of all these documents. But what it did know was
amply sufficient. On the 23rd, representatives of various units
at the front filed past the Petrograd Soviet and demanded peace.
Otherwise, they answered, they would march to the rear and
"destroy all the parasites who want to keep on fighting for an-
other ten years/* Seize the power, the front men said to the
Soviet, "the trenches will support you/ 5

In the more remote and backward fronts, the southwestern
and Rumanian, Bolsheviks were still rare specimens, curiosities.
But the mood of the soldiers here was the same as elsewhere.
Evgenia Bosh tells how in the 2nd Corps of the Guards, quartered
in the vicinity of Zhmerinka, among 60,000 soldiers there was
one young communist and two sympathizers. This did not pre-
vent the corps from coming out in support of the insurrection
in the October days.

To the very last hour the government circles rested their
hope in the Cossacks. But the less blind among the politicians
of the right camp understood that here too things were in a very
bad way. The Cossack officers were Kornilovists almost to a man.
The rank-and-file were tending more and more to the left. In
the government they did not understand this, imagining that
the coolness of the Cossack regiments to the Winter Palace was
caused by injured feelings about Kaledin. In the long run, how-
ever, it became clear even to the Minister of Justice, Malianto-
vich, that "only the Cossack officers" were supporters of Kaledin.
The rank-and-file Cossacks, like all the soldiers, were simply go-
ing Bolshevik.

Of that front which in the early days of March had kissed
the hands and feet of liberal priests, had carried Kadet ministers
on its shoulders, got drunk on the speeches of Kerensky, and be-
lieved that the Bolsheviks were German agents of that there
was nothing left. Those rosy illusions had been drowned in the
mud of the trenches, which the soldiers refused to go on kneading
with their leaky boots. "The denouement is approaching," wrote

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THE ART OF INSURRECTION

Budberg on the very day of the Petrograd insurrection, "and
there can be no doubt of its outcome. On our front there is not
one single unit . . . which would not be in the control of the
Bolsheviks/'

CHAPTER VII
THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

AL is changed and yet all remains as before. The revolu-
tion has shaken the country, deepened the split, fright-
ened some, embittered others, but not yet wiped out a
thing or replaced it. Imperial St. Petersburg seems drowned in
a sleepy lethargy rather than dead. The revolution has stuck little
red flags in the hands of the cast-iron monuments of the mon-
archy. Great red streamers are hanging down the fronts of the
government buildings. But the palaces, the ministries, the head-
quarters, seem to be living a life entirely apart from those red
banners, tolerably faded, moreover, by the autumn rains. The
two-headed eagles with the scepter of empire have been torn
down where possible, but oftener draped or hastily painted over.
They seem to be lurking there. All the old Russia is lurking, its
jaws set in rage.

The slight figures of the militia-men at the street corners re-
mind one of the revolution that has wiped out the old "Pha-
raohs," who used to stand there like live monuments. Moreover
Russia has now for almost two months been called a republic.
And the tzar's family is in Tobolsk. Yes, the February whirl-
wind has left its traces. But the tzarist generals remain generals,
the senators senatorialize, the privy councillors defend their dig-
nity, the Table of Precedence is still in effect. Colored hat-bands
and cockades recall the bureaucratic hierarchy; yellow buttons
with an eagle still distinguish the student. And yet more im-
portant the landlords are still landlords, no end of the war is
in sight, the Allied diplomats are impudently jerking official
Russia along on a string.

All remains as before and yet nobody knows himself. The
aristocratic quarters feel that they have been moved out into the
backyard; the quarters of the liberal bourgeoisie have moved
nearer the aristocracy. From being a patriotic myth, the Russian

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

people have become an awful reality. Everything is billowing and
shaking under foot. Mysticism flares up with sharpened force in
those circles which not long ago were making fun of the super-
stitions of the monarchy.

Brokers, lawyers, ballerinas are cursing the oncoming eclipse
of public morals. Faith in the Constituent Assembly is evaporat-
ing day by day. Gorky in his newspaper is prophesying the ap-
proaching downfall of culture. The flight from raving and
hungry Petrograd to a more peaceful and well-fed province, on
the increase ever since the July Days, now becomes a stampede.
Respectable families who have not succeeded in getting away
from the capital, try in vain to insulate themselves from reality
behind stone wall and under iron roof. But the echoes of the
storm penetrate on every side: through the market, where every-
thing is getting dear and nothing to be had; through the respect-
able press, which is turning into one yelp of hatred and fear;
through the seething streets where from time to time shootings
are to be heard under the windows; and finally through the back
entrance, through the servants, who are no longer humbly sub-
missive. It is here that the revolution strikes home to the most
sensitive spot. That obstreperousness of the household slaves
destroys utterly the stability of the family regime.

Nevertheless the everyday routine defends itself with all its
might. School-boys are still studying the old text-books, func-
tionaries drawing up the same useless papers, poets scribbling the
verses that nobody reads, nurses telling the fairy-tales about
Ivan Tzarevich. The nobility's and merchants* daughters, com-
ing in from the provinces, are studying music or hunting hus-
bands. The same old canon on the wall of the Peter and Paul
fortress continues to announce the noon hour. A new ballet is
going on in the Mariinsky theater, and the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Tereshchenko, stronger on choreography than diplomacy,
finds time, we may assume, to admire the steel toes of the bal-
lerina and thus demonstrate the stability of the regime.

The remnants of the old banquet are still very plentiful and
everything can be had for big money. The Guard officers still
click their spurs accurately and go after adventures. Wild parties
are in progress in the private dining rooms of expensive restau-

201

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

rants. The shutting-off of the electric lights at midnight does
not prevent the flourishing of gambling clubs where champagne
sparkles by candlelight, where illustrious peculators swindle no
less illustrious German spies, where monarchist conspirators call
the bets of Semitic smugglers, and where the astronomical figures
of the stakes played for indicate both the scale of debauchery
and the scale of inflation.

Can it be that a mere tramcar, run-down, dirty, dilatory,
draped with clusters of people, leads from this St. Petersburg in
its death-agony into the workers* quarters so passionately and
tensely alive with a new hope? The blue-and-gold cupola of
Smolny Convent announces from afar the headquarters of the
insurrection. It is on the edge of the city where the tram-line
ends and the Neva describes a sharp turn south, separating the
center of the capital from the suburbs. That long gray three-
story building, an educative barrack for the daughters of the
nobility, is now the stronghold of the Soviets. Its long echoing
corridors seem to have been made for teaching the laws of per-
spective. Over the doors of many of the rooms along the cor-
ridors little enameled tablets are still preserved: 'Teacher's
room," "Third Grade," "Fourth Grade," "Grade Supervisor."
But alongside the old tablets, or covering them, sheets of paper
have been tacked up as best they might, bearing the mysterious
hieroglyphics of the revolution: Tz-K P-S-R, S-D Mensheviki,
S-D-Bolsheviki, Left S-R, Anarchist-Communists, Despatch-
ing Room of the Tz-I-K, etc., etc. The observant John Reed
notices a placard on the walls: "Comrades, for the sake of your
own health, observe cleanliness." Alas, nobody observes cleanli-
ness, not even nature. October Petrograd is living under a canopy
of rain. The streets, long unswept, are dirty. Enormous puddles
are standing in the court of Smolny. The mud is carried into the
corridors and halls by the soldiers' boots. But nobody is looking
down now underfoot. All are looking forward.

Smolny is more and more firmly and imperiously giving com-
mands, for the passionate sympathy of the masses is lifting her
up. However, the central leadership grasps directly only the top-
most links of that revolutionary system which as a connected
whole is destined to achieve the change. The most important

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

processes are taking place below, and somehow of their own ac-
cord. The factories and barracks are the chief forges of history
in these days and nights. As in February, the Vyborg district
focusses the basic forces of the revolution. But it has today a
thing it lacked in February its own powerful organization open
and universally recognized. From the dwellings, the factory
lunch-rooms, the clubs, the barracks, all threads lead to the house
numbered 33 Samsonevsky Prospect, where are located the dis-
trict Committee of the Bolsheviks, the Vyborg soviet, and the
military headquarters. The district militia is fusing with the
Red Guard. The district is wholly in the control of the workers.
If the government should raid Smolny, the Vyborg district alone
could re-establish a center and guarantee the further offensive.

The denouement was approaching close, but the ruling circles
thought, or pretended to think, that they had no special cause
for anxiety. The British Embassy, which had its own reasons for
following events in Petrograd with some attention, received, ac-
cording to the Russian ambassador in London, reliable informa-
tion about the coming insurrection. To the anxious inquiries of
Buchanan at the inevitable diplomatic luncheon, Tereshchenko
replied with warm assurance: "Nothing of the kind" is possible;
the government has the reins firmly in hand. The Russian
Embassy in London found out about the revolution in Petrograd
from the despatches of a British telegraph agency.

The mine owner, Auerbach, paying a visit during those days
to the deputy-minister, Palchinsky, inquired in passing after
a conversation about more serious matters as to the "dark clouds
on the political horizon." He received a most reassuring answer:
The next storm in a series, and nothing more; it will pass over
and all will be clear "sleep well." Palchinsky himself was going
to pass one or two sleepless nights before he got arrested.

The more unceremoniously Kerensky treated the compromise
leaders, the less did he doubt that in the hour of danger they
would come punctually to his aid. The weaker the Compromisers
grew, the more carefully did they surround themselves with an
atmosphere of illusion. Exchanging words of mutual encourage-
ment between their Petrograd turrets and their upper-crust or-
ganizations in the provinces and the front, the Mensheviks and

203

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

Social-Revolutionaries created a simulacrum of public opinion,
and thus disguising their own impotence, fooled not so much
their enemy as themselves.

The cumbersome and good-for-nothing state apparatus, rep-
resenting a combination of March socialist with tzarist bureau-
crat, was perfectly accommodated to the task of self-deception.
The half-baked March socialist dreaded to appear to the bureau-
crat a not wholly mature statesman. The bureaucrat dreaded lest
he show a lack of respect to the new ideas. Thus was created
a web of official lies, in which generals, district attorneys,
newspaper-men, commissars, aides-de-camp, lied the more, the
nearer they stood to the seats of power. The commander of the
Petrograd military district made comforting reports, for the
reason that Kerensky, faced by an uncomforting reality, had
great need of them.

The traditions of the dual power worked in the same direc-
tion. Were not the current orders of the military headquarters,
when countersigned by the Military Revolutionary Committee,
implicitly obeyed? The patrolling squads throughout the city
were filled out by the troops of the garrison in the usual order
and we must add, it had been long since the troops had done
their patrol duty with such zeal as now. Discontent among the
masses? But "slaves in revolt" are always discontented. Only the
scum of the garrison and the workers* districts will take part in
mutinous attempts. The soldiers' sections are against headquar-
ters? But the Military department of the Central Executive Com-
mittee is for Kerensky. The whole organized democracy, with
the exception of the Bolsheviks, supports the government. Thus
the rosy March nimbus had turned into a gray vapor, hiding the
actual traits of things.

It was only after the break between Smolny and headquarters
that the government tried to adopt a more serious attitude toward
the situation. There is of course no immediate danger, they said,
but this time we must avail ourselves of the opportunity to put
an end to the Bolsheviks. Besides, the bourgeois Allies were bring-
ing every pressure to bear on the Winter Palace. On the night
of the 24th the government summoned up its courage and passed
a resolution: to institute legal proceedings against the Military

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

Revolutionary Committee; to shut down the Bolshevik papers
advocating insurrection; to summon reliable military detach-
ments from the environs and from the front. The proposal to
arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee as a body, although
adopted in principle, was postponed in execution. For so large
an undertaking, they decided, it was necessary to secure in ad-
vance the support of the Pre-Parliament.

The rumor of the government's decision spread immediately
through the town. In the building of the main headquarters
alongside the Winter Palace, the soldiers of the Pavlovsky regi-
ment, one of the most reliable units of the Military Revolutionary
Committee, were on sentry duty during the night of the 24th.
Conversations went on in their presence about summoning the
junkers, about lifting the bridges, about arrests. All that the
Pavlovtsi managed to hear and remember they immediately
passed on to Smolny. Those in the revolutionary center did not
always know how to make use of the communications of this
self -constituted Intelligence Service. But it fulfilled an invalu-
able function. The workers and soldiers of the whole city were
made aware of the intentions of the enemy, and reinforced in
their readiness to resist.

Early in the morning the authorities began their preparations
for aggressive action. The military schools of the capital were
ordered to make ready for battle. The cruiser Aurora moored in
the Neva, its crew favorable to the Bolsheviks, was ordered to
put out and join the rest of the fleet. Military detachments were
called in from neighboring points: a battalion of shock troops
from Tzarskoe Selo, the junkers from Oranienbaum, the artil-
lery from Pavlovsk. The headquarters of the northern front was
asked to send reliable troops to the capital immediately. In the
way of direct measures of military precaution, the following
orders were given: to increase the guard of the Winter Palace;
to raise the bridges over the Neva; to have all automobiles in-
spected by the junkers; to cut Smolny out of the telephone sys-
tem. The Minister of Justice, Maliantovich, gave an order for
the immediate arrest of those Bolsheviks released under bail who
had again brought themselves to attention by anti-governmental
activity. This blow was aimed primarily at Trotsky. The fickle-

205

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

ness of the times is well illustrated by the fact that Maliantovich
as also his predecessor, Zarudny had been Trotsky's defense
counsel in the trial of the St. Petersburg Soviet of 1905. Then
too it had been a question of the leadership of the Soviet. The
indictments were identical in the two cases, except that the
former defenders when they became accusers added the little
point about German gold.

Headquarters developed a particularly feverish activity in
the sphere of typography. Document followed document. No
coming-out will be permitted; the guilty will be held strictly
responsible; detachments of the garrison not to leave their bar-
racks without orders from headquarters; "All commissars of the
Petrograd Soviet to be removed"; their illegal activities to be in-
vestigated "with a view to court martial." In these formidable
orders it was not indicated who was to carry them out or how.
Under threat of personal liability the commander demanded
that owners of automobiles place them at the disposal of head-
quarters "with a view of preventing unlawful seizures," but
nobody moved a finger in response.

The Central Executive Committee was also prolific of warn-
ings and forbiddings. And the peasant executive committee, the
city duma, the central committees of the Mensheviks and Social-
Revolutionaries followed in its steps. All these institutions were
sufficiently rich in literary resources. In the proclamations which
plastered the walls and fences, the talk was invariably about a
handful of lunatics, about the danger of bloody encounters,
about the inevitability of counter-revolution.

At five-thirty in the morning a government commissar with
a detachment of junkers showed up at the Bolshevik printing-
plant, and after manning the exits, presented an order of head-
quarters for the immediate suppression of the central organ and
the soldiers* paper. What? Headquarters? Does that still exist?
No orders are recognized here without the sanction of the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee. But that did not help. The stereo-
types were smashed, the building sealed. The government had
scored its first success.

A worker and a working-girl from the Bolshevik printing-
plant ran panting to Smolny and there found Podvoisky and

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

Trotsky. If the Committee would give them a guard against
the junkers, the workers would bring out the paper. A form
was soon found for the first answer to the government offensive.
An order was issued to the Litovsky regiment to send a company
immediately to the defense of the workers' press. The messengers
from the printing-plant insisted that the Sixth Battalion of sap-
pers be also ordered out: these were near neighbors and loyal
friends. Telephonograms were immediately sent to the two ad-
dresses. The Litovtsi and the sappers came out without delay.
The seals were torn from the building, the moulds again poured,
and the work went on. With a few hours' delay the newspaper
suppressed by the government came out under protection of the
troops of a committee which was itself liable to arrest. That was
insurrection. That is how it developed.

During this same time the cruiser Aurora had addressed a
question to Smolny: Shall we go to sea or remain in the Neva?
The very same sailors who had guarded the Winter Palace against
Kornilov in August were now burning to settle accounts with
Kerensky. The government order was promptly countermanded
by the Committee and the crew received Order No. 1218: "In
case of an attack on the Petrograd garrison by the counter-
revolutionary forces, the cruiser Aurora is to protect herself
with tugs, steam-boats, and cutters." The cruiser enthusiasti-
cally carried out this order, for which it had only been waiting.

These two acts of resistance, suggested by workers and sailors,
and carried out, thanks to the sympathy of the garrison, with
complete impunity, became political events of capital impor-
tance. The last remnants of the fetishism of authority crumbled
to dust. "It became instantly clear," says one of the participants,
"that the job was done!" If not yet done, it was at least proving
much simpler than anyone had imagined yesterday.

An attempt to suppress the papers, a resolution to prosecute
the Military Revolutionary Committee, an order removing
commissars, the cutting-out of Smolny's telephones these pin-
pricks were just sufficient to convict the government of prepar-
ing a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat. Although an insurrec-
tion can win only on the offensive, it develops better, the more
it looks like self-defense. A piece of official sealing-wax on the

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

door of the Bolshevik editorial-rooms as a military measure
that is not much. But what a superb signal for battle! Telephono-
grams to all districts and units of the garrison announced the
event: "The enemy of the people took the offensive during the
night. The Military Revolutionary Committee is leading the re-
sistance to the assault of the conspirators/ 3 The conspirators
these were the institutions of the official government. From the
pen of revolutionary conspirators this term came as a surprise,
but it wholly corresponded to the situation and to the feelings
of the masses. Crowded out of all its positions, compelled to un-
dertake a belated defense, incapable of mobilizing the necessary
forces, or even finding out whether it had such forces, the gov-
ernment had developed a scattered, unthought-out, -unco-
ordinated action, which in the eyes of the masses inevitably
looked like a malevolent attempt. The Committee's telephono-
grams gave the command: "Make the regiment ready for battle
and await further orders, 5 ' That was the voice of a sovereign
power. The commissars of the Committee, themselves liable to
removal by the government, continued with redoubled con-
fidence to remove those whom they thought it necessary to re-
move.

The Aurora in the Neva meant not only an excellent fighting
unit in the service of the insurrection, but a radio-station ready
for use. Invaluable advantage! The sailor Kurkov has remem-
bered: "We got word from Trotsky to broadcast . . . that the
counter-revolution had taken the offensive." Here too the de-
fensive formulation concealed a summons to insurrection ad-
dressed to the whole country. The garrisons guarding the ap-
proaches to Petrograd were ordered by radio from the Aurora
to hold up the counter-revolutionary echelons, and in case ad-
monitions were inadequate to employ force. All revolutionary
organizations were placed under obligation "to sit continually,
accumulating all possible information as to the plans and activi-
ties of the conspirators." There was no lack of proclamations on
the part of the Committee also, as you see. In its proclamations,
however, the word was not divorced from the deed, but was a
comment on it.

Somewhat belatedly the Military Revolutionary Committee

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

undertook a more serious fortification of Smolny. In leaving the
building at three o'clock on the night of the 24th, John Reed
noticed machine guns at the entrances and strong patrols guard-
ing the gates and the adjacent street corners. The patrols had been
reinforced the day before by a company of the Litovsky regi-
ment and a company of machine-gunners with twenty-four
machine guns. During the day the guard increased continually.
"In the Smolny region," writes Shliapnikov, "I saw a familiar
picture, reminding me of the first days of the February revolu-
tion around the Tauride Palace." The same multitude of soldiers,
workers and weapons of all kinds. Innumerable cords of fire-
wood had been piled up in the court a perfect cover against
rifle-fire. Motor trucks were bringing up foodstuffs and muni-
tions. "All Smolny," says Raskolnikov, "was converted into an
armed camp. Cannon were in position out in front of the col-
umns. Machine guns alongside them. . . . Almost on every step
those same 'maxims,* looking like toy-cannon. And through all
the corridors . . . the swift, loud, happy tramp of workers,
soldiers, sailors and agitators." Sukhanov, accusing the organizers
of the insurrection not without foundation of insufficient
military precaution, writes: "Only now, in the afternoon and
evening of the 24th, did they begin to bring up armed detach-
ments of Red Guards and soldiers to Smolny to defend the head-
quarters of the insurrection. ... By the evening of the 24th
the defense of Smolny began to look like something."

This matter is not without importance. In Smolny, whence
the compromisist Executive Committee had managed to steal
away to the headquarters of the government staff, there were
now concentrated the heads of all the revolutionary organiza-
tions led by the Bolsheviks. Here assembled on that day the all-
important meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks
to take the final decision before striking the blow. Eleven mem-
bers were present. Lenin had not yet turned up from his refuge
in the Vyborg district. Zinoviev also was absent from the session.
According to the temperamental expression of Dzerzhinsky, he
was "hiding and taking no part in the party work." Kamenev,
on the other hand, although sharing the views of Zinoviev, was
very active in the headquarters of the insurrection. Stalin was

209

THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

not present at the session. Generally speaking he did not appear
at Smolny, spending his time in the editorial office of the central
organ. The session, as always, was held under the chairmanship
of Sverdlov. The official minutes of the session are scant, but
they indicate everything essential. For characterizing the leading
participants in the revolution, and the distribution of functions
among them, they are irreplaceable.

It was a question of taking full possession of Petrograd in
the next twenty-four hours. That meant to seize those political
and technical institutions which were still in the hands of the
government. The Congress of Soviets must hold its session under
the soviet power. The practical measures of the nocturnal as-
sault had been worked out, or were being worked out, by the
Military Revolutionary Committee and the Military Organiza-
tions of the Bolsheviks. The Central Committee was to underline
the final points.

First of all a proposal of Kamenev was adopted: "Today no
member of the Central Committee can leave Smolny without
a special resolution." It was decided over and above that, to keep
on duty here members of the Petrograd Committee of the party.
The minutes read further: "Trotsky proposes that they place
at the disposal of the Military Revolutionary Committee two
members of the Central Committee for the purpose of establish-
ing communications with the postal and telegraph workers and
the railroad workers; a third member to keep the Provisional
Government under observation/* It was resolved to delegate
Dzerzhinsky to the postal and telegraph workers, Bubnov to
the railroad workers. At first, and obviously at Sverdlov's sug-
gestion, it was proposed to allot the watch over the Provisional
Government to Podvoisky. The minutes read: "Objections to
Podvoisky; Sverdlov is appointed." Miliutin, who passed as an
economist, was appointed to organize the supply of food for the
period of the insurrection. Negotiations with the Left Social-
Revolutionaries were entrusted to Kamenev, who had the reputa-
tion of a skilful although too yielding parliamentary. "Yield-
ing," of course only from a Bolshevik criterion. "Trotsky
proposes' 5 we read further "that a reserve headquarters be es-
tablished in the Peter and Paul fortress, and that one member of

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the Central Committee be sent there for that purpose." It was re-
solved: "To appoint Lashevich and Blagonravov for general ob-
servation; to commission Sverdlov to keep in continual touch with
the fortress." Further: "to supply all members of the Central
Committee with passes to the fortress.' 3

Along party lines all threads were held in the hands of Sverd-
lov, who knew the cadres of the party as no one else did. He kept
Smolny in touch with the party apparatus, supplied the Military
Revolutionary Committee with the necessary workers, and was
summoned into the Committee for counsel at all critical mo-
ments. Since the Committee had a too broad, and to some extent
fluid, membership, the more conspirative undertakings were car-
ried out through the heads of the Military Organization of the
Bolsheviks, or through Sverdlov, who was the unofficial but all
the more real "general secretary" of the October insurrection.

The Bolshevik delegates arriving in those days for the Soviet
Congress would come first into the hands of Sverdlov, and would
not be left for one unnecessary hour without something to do.
On the 24th there were already two or three hundred provincial
delegates in Petrograd, and the majority of them were included
one way or another in the mechanics of the insurrection. At
two o'clock in the afternoon, they assembled at a caucus in
Smolny to hear a report from the Central Committee of the
party. There were waverers among them who like Zinoviev and
Kamenev preferred a waiting policy; there were also newcomers
who were merely not sufficiently reliable. There could be no
talk of expounding before this caucus the whole plan of the in-
surrection. Whatever is said at a large meeting inevitably gets
abroad. It was still impossible even to throw off the defensive
envelope of the attack without creating confusion in the minds
of certain units of the garrison. But it was necessary to make
the delegates understand that a decisive struggle had already
begun, and that it would remain only for the Congress to
crown it.

Referring to recent articles of Lenin, Trotsky demonstrated
that "a conspiracy does not contradict the principles of Marx-
ism," if objective relations make an insurrection possible and in-
evitable. "The physical barrier on the road to power must be

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

overcome by a blow. . . ." However, up till now the policy of
the Military Revolutionary Committee has not gone beyond the
policy of self-defense. Of course this self-defense must be under-
stood in a sufficiently broad sense. To assure the publication of
the Bolshevik press with the help of armed forces, or to retain
the Aurora in the waters of the Neva "Comrades, is that not
self-defense? It is defense!" If the government intends to ar-
rest us, we have machine guns on the roof of Smolny in prepara-
tion for such an event. "That also, comrades, is a measure of de-
fense. " But how about the Provisional Government? says one of
the written questions. What if Kerensky tries not to submit to
the Congress of Soviets? The spokesman replied: If Kerensky
should attempt not to submit to the Congress of Soviets, then
the resistance of the Government would have created "not a
political but a police question." That was in essence almost ex-
actly what happened.

At that moment Trotsky was called out to consult with a
deputation just arrived from the city duma. In the capital, to
be sure, it was still quiet, but alarming rumors were on foot. The
mayor put these questions: Does the Soviet intend to make an
insurrection, and how about keeping order in the city? And what
will become of the duma itself if it does not recognize the revolu-
tion? These respected gentlemen wanted to know too much. The
answer was: The question of power is to be decided by the
Congress of Soviets. Whether this will lead to an armed struggle
"depends not so much upon the Soviets as upon those who, in
conflict with the unanimous will of the people, are retaining the
state power in their hands." If the Congress declines the power,
the Petrograd Soviet will submit. But the government itself is
obviously seeking a conflict. Orders have been issued for the ar-
rest of the Military Revolutionary Committee. The workers and
soldiers can only reply with ruthless resistance. What about loot-
ing and violence from criminal gangs? An order of the Com-
mittee issued today reads: "At the first attempt of criminal ele-
ments to bring about disturbances, looting, knifing or shooting
on the streets of Petrograd, the criminals will be wiped off the
face of the earth." As to the city duma, it will be possible in
case of a conflict to employ constitutional methods dissolution

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THE CONQUEST Of THE CAPITAL

and a new election. The delegation went away dissatisfied. But
what had they as a matter of fact expected?

That official visit of the City Fathers to the camp of the rebels
was only too candid a demonstration of the impotence of the
ruling groups. "Remember, comrades," said Trotsky upon re-
turning to the Bolshevik caucus, "that a few weeks ago when we
won the majority, we were only a trade-name without a print-
ing press, without a treasury, without departments and now
the city duma sends a deputation to the arrested Military Revolu-
tionary Committee" for information as to the destiny of the city
and the state.

The Peter and Paul fortress, won over politically only yes-
terday, is today completely taken possession of by the Military
Revolutionary Committee. The machine gun crew, the most
revolutionary unit, is being brought into fighting trim. A mighty
work of cleaning the Colt machine guns is in progress there
are eighty of them. Machine guns are set up on the fortress wall
to command the quay and the Troitsky bridge. The sentry guard
at the gates is reinforced. Patrols are sent out into the surround-
ing districts. But in the heat of these morning hours it suddenly
becomes known that within the fortress itself the situation is
not assured. The uncertainty lies in a bicycle battalion. Recruited,
like the cavalry, from well-to-do and rich peasants, the bicycle
men, coming from the intermediate city layers, constituted a
most conservative part of the army. A theme for idealistic psy-
chologists: Let a man find himself, in distinction from others,
on top of two wheels with a chain at least in a poor country
like Russia and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In
America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

Brought in from the front to put down the July movement,
the bicycle battalion had zealously stormed the Palace of Kshe-
sinskaia, and afterward been installed in Peter and Paul as one
of the most reliable detachments. It was learned that at yester-
day's meeting which settled the fate of the fortress, the bicycle
men- had not been present. The old discipline still held in the
battalion to such an extent that the officers had succeeded in
keeping the soldiers from going into the fortress court. Count-
ing on these bicycle men, the commandant of the fortress held

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

his chin high, frequently got into telephone connection with
Kerensky's headquarters, and even professed to be about to ar-
rest the Bolshevik commissar. The situation must not be left in-
definite for an extra minute. Upon an order from Smolny, Blag-
onravov confronts the enemy: the colonel is subjected to house
arrest, the telephones are removed from all officers' apartments.
The government staff calls up excitedly to know why the com-
mandant is silent, and in general what is going on in the fortress.
Blagonravov respectfully reports over the telephone that the
fortress henceforward fulfills only the orders of the Military
Revolutionary Committee, with which it behooves the govern-
ment in the future to get in connection.

All the troops of the fortress garrison accepted the arrest of
the commandant with complete satisfaction, but the bicycle men
bore themselves evasively. What lay concealed behind their sulky
silence: a hidden hostility or the last waverings? *'We decided to
hold a special meeting for the bicycle men," writes Blagonravov,
"and invite our best agitational forces, and above all Trotsky,
who had enormous authority and influence over the soldier
masses/' At four o'clock in the afternoon the whole battalion
met in the neighboring building of the Cirque Moderne. As gov-
ernmental opponent, Quartermaster-General Poradelov, consid-
ered to be a Social-Revolutionary, took the floor. His objections
were so cautious as to seem equivocal; and so much the more
destructive was the attack of the Committee's representatives.
This supplementary oratorical battle for the Peter and Paul
fortress ended as might have been foreseen: by all voices except
thirty the battalion supported the resolution of Trotsky. One
more of the potential bloody conflicts was settled before the fight-
ing and without bloodshed. That was the October insurrection.
Such was its style.

It was now possible to rely upon the fortress with tranquil
confidence. Weapons were given out from the arsenal without
hindrance. At Smolny, in the Factory and Shop Committee
room, delegates from the plants stood in line to get orders for
rifles. The capital had seen many queues during the war years
now it saw rifle-queues for the first time. Trucks from all the
districts of the city were driving up to the arsenal. "You would

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hardly have recognized the Peter and Paul fortress/' writes the
worker Skorinko. "Its renowned silence was broken by the chug-
ging automobiles, shouts, and the creak of wagons. There was
a special bustle in the storehouses. . . . Here too they led by
us the first prisoners, officers and junkers.*'

The meeting in the Cirque Moderne had another result. The
bicycle men who had been guarding the "Winter Palace since
July withdrew, announcing that they would no longer consent
to protect the government. That was a heavy blow. The bicycle
men had to be replaced by junkers. The military support of the
government was more and more reducing itself to the officers'
schools a thing which not only narrowed it extremely, but also
conclusively revealed its social constitution.

The workers of the Putilov wharf and not they alone
were insistently urging Smolny to disarm the junkers. If this
measure had been taken after careful preparation, in cooperation
with the non-combatant units of the schools, on the night of
the 25th, the capture of the Winter Palace would have offered no
difficulties whatever. If the junkers had been disarmed even on
the night of the 26th, after the capture of the Winter Palace,
there would have been no attempted counter-insurrection on
the 29th of October. But the leaders were still in many direc-
tions revealing a "magnanimous spirit" in reality an excess of
optimistic confidence and did not always listen attentively
enough to the sober voice of the lower ranks. In this Lenin's
absence, too, was felt. The masses had to correct these omissions
and mistakes, with unnecessary losses on both sides. In a serious
struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at
an inopportune time.

At an afternoon session of the Pre-Parliament, Kerensky
sings his swan song. During -recent days, he says, the population
of Russia, and especially of the capital, has been in a constant
state of alarm. "Calls for insurrection appear daily in the Bol-
shevik papers." The orator quotes the articles of the wanted state
criminal, Vladimir Ulianov Lenin. The quotations are brilliant
and irrefutably prove that the above-named individual is incit-
ing to insurrection. And when? At a moment when the govern-
ment is just taking up the question of transferring the land to

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the peasant committees, and of measures to bring the war to an
end. The authorities have so far made no haste to put down the
conspirators, wishing to give them the opportunity to correct
their own mistakes. "That is just what is wrong!" comes from
the section where Miliukov is leader. But Kerensky is unabashed.
<C I prefer in general,** he says, "that a government should act
more slowly, and thus more correctly, and at the necessary mo-
ment more decisively." From those lips the words have a strange
sound! At any rate: "All days of grace are now past"; the Bol-
sheviks have not only not repented, but they have called out
two companies, and are independently distributing weapons and
cartridges. This time the government intends to put an end to
the lawlessness of the rabble. "I choose my words deliberately:
rabble." This insult to the people is greeted on the right with
loud applause. He, Kerensky, has already given orders, he says,
for the necessary arrests. "Special attention must be given to the
speeches of the President of the Soviet, Bronstein-Trotsky." And
be it known that the government has more than adequate forces;
telegrams are coming in continually from the front demanding
decisive measures against the Bolsheviks. At this point Konovalov
hands the speaker the telephonogram from the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee to the troops of the garrison, instructing
them to "make the regiment ready for battle and await further
orders." After reading the document Kerensky solemnly con-
cludes: "In the language of the law and of judicial authority that
is called a state of insurrection." Miliukov bears witness: "Keren-
sky pronounced these words in the complacent tone of a lawyer
who has at last succeeded in getting evidence against his oppo-
nent." "Those groups and parties who have dared to lift their
hands against the state," he concludes, "are liable to immediate,
decisive and permanent liquidation." The entire hall, except the
extreme Left, demonstratively applauded. The speech ended with
a demand: that this very day, in this session, an answer be given
to the question, "Can the government fulfil its duty with con-
fidence in the support of this lofty assemblage?*' Without await-
ing the vote, Kerensky returned to headquarters confident, ac-
cording to his own account, that an hour would not pass before

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he would receive the needed decision. For what purpose it was
needed remains unknown.

However, it turned out otherwise. From two to six o'clock
the Mariinsky Palace was busy with factional and inter-factional
conferences, striving to work out a formula. The conferees did
not understand that they were working out a formula for their
own funeral. Not one of the compromisist groups had the cour-
age to identify itself with the government. Dan said: "We Men-
sheviks are ready to defend the Provisional Government with the
last drop of our blood; but let the government make it possible
for the democracy to unite around it." Towards evening the left
faction of the Pre-Parliament, worn out with the search for a
solution, united on a formula borrowed by Dan from Martov,
a formula which laid the responsibility for insurrection not only
on the Bolsheviks, but also on the government, and demanded
immediate transfer of the land to the Land Committees, inter-
cession with the Allies in favor of peace negotiations, etc. Thus
the apostles of moderation tried at the last moment to counter-
feit those slogans which only yesterday they had been denounc-
ing as demagogy and adventurism. Unqualified support to the
government was promised by the Kadets and Cossacks that is,
by those two groups who intended to throw Kerensky over at
the very first opportunity but they were a minority. The sup-
port of the Pre-Parliament could have added little to the govern-
ment, but Miliukov is right: this refusal of support robbed the
government of the last remnants of its authority. Had not the
government itself only a few weeks before determined the com-
position of the Pre-Parliament?

While they were seeking a salvation formula in the Mariin-
sky Palace, the Petrograd Soviet was assembling in Smolny for
purposes of information. The spokesman considered it necessary
to remind the Soviet that the Military Revolutionary Committee
had arisen et not as an instrument of insurrection, but on the basis
of revolutionary self-defense." The Committee had not permitted
Kerensky to remove the revolutionary troops from Petrograd,
and it had taken under its protection the workers* press. "Was
this insurrection?" The Aurora stands today where she stood

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THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOVIETS

last night. "Is this insurrection?" We have today a semi-
government, in which the people do not believe, and which does
not believe in itself, because it is inwardly dead. This semi-
government is awaiting that swish of the historic broom that
will clear the space for an authentic government of the revolu-
tionary people. Tomorrow the Congress of Soviets will open. It
is the duty of the garrison and the workers to put all their forces
at the disposal of the Congress. "If, however, the government
attempts to employ the twenty-four hours remaining to it in
plunging a knife into the back of the revolution, then we de-
clare once more: The vanguard of the revolution will answer
blow with blow and iron with steel." This open threat was at the
same time a political screen for the forthcoming night attack.
In conclusion Trotsky informed the meeting that the Left
Social-Revolutionary faction of the Pre-Parliament, after today's
speech from Kerensky and a mouse-riot among the compromise
factions, had sent a delegation to Smolny to express its readi-
ness to enter officially into the staff of the Military Revolution-
ary Committee. In this shift of the Left Social Revolutionaries
the Soviet joyfully welcomed a reflection of deeper processes:
the widening scope of the peasant war and the successful progress
of the Petrograd insurrection.

Commenting on this speech of the President of the Petrograd
Soviet, Miliukov writes: "Probably this was Trotsky's original
plan having prepared for battle, to confront the government
with the 'unanimous will of the people' as expressed in the
Congress of Soviets, and thus give the new power the appearance
of a legal origin. But the government proved weaker than he
expected, and the power fell into his hands of its own accord be-
fore the Congress had time to assemble and express itself." "What
is true here, is that the weakness of the government exceeded all
expectations. But from the beginning the plan had been to seize
the power before the Congress opened. Miliukov recognizes this,
by the way, in a different connection. "The actual intentions of
the leaders of the revolution," he says, "went much farther than
these official announcements of Trotsky. The Congress of Soviets
was to be placed before a fait accompli"

The purely military plan consisted originally of guaranteeing

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THE CONQUEST OF THE CAPITAL

a united action of the Baltic sailors and the armed Vyborg work-
ers. The sailors were to come by railroad and detrain at the Fin-
land station, which is in the Vyborg district, and then from this
base by way of a further assimilation of the Red Guard and units
of the garrison, the insurrection was to spread to other districts
of the city, and having seized the bridges, to advance into the
center for the final blow. This scheme naturally deriving from
the circumstances, and formulated, it seems, by Antonov was
drawn up on the assumption that the enemy would be able to
put up a considerable resistance. It was just this premise that
soon fell away. It was unnecessary to start from a limited base,
because the government proved open to attack wherever the in-
surrectionists found it necessary to strike a blow.

The strategic plan underwent changes in the matter of dates
also, and that in two directions: the insurrection began earlier
and ended later than had been indicated. The morning attacks
of the government called out by way of self-defense an immedi-
ate resistance from the Military Revolutionary Committee. The
impotence of the authorities, thus revealed, impelled Smolny dur-
ing the same day to offensive actions preserving, to be sure, a
half-way, semi- disguised and preparatory character. The main
blow as before was prepared during the night: in that sense the
plan held good. It was transgressed, however, in the process of
fulfillment but now in an opposite direction. It had been pro-
posed to occupy during the night all the commanding summits,
and first of all the Winter Palace where the central power had
taken refuge. But time-calculations are even more difficult in in-
surrection than in regular war. The leaders were many hours
late with the concentration of forces, and the operations against
the palace, not even begun during the night, formed a special
chapter of the revolution ending only on the night of the 26th
that is, a whole twenty-four hours late. The most brilliant
victories are not achieved without duds.

After Kerensky's speech at the Pre-Parliament the authorities
tried to broaden their offensive. The railroad stations were oc-
cupied by detachments of junkers. Pickets were posted at the
big street-crossings and ordered to requisition the private auto-
mobiles not turned over to headquarters. By three o'clock in the

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afternoon the bridges were raised, except for the Dvor