I was ‘interrupted’ by a political crisis – the eve of the October revolu
tion of 1917. Such an ‘interruption’ can only be welcomed; but the writing of the second part of the pamphlet … will probably have to be put off for a long time. It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it. [SW 2 361]
One may doubt that it was truly preferable to experience revolution rather than write about it. It is rather extraordinary to think that, although it was certainly enforced to a large degree, Lenin occupied so much of his time in the maelstrom of events in mid-1917 writing an erudite commentary on Marx and Engels together with scholarly refuta
tion of critics then and now. Most of the pamphlet is brilliant exposition, critique and polemic, practical applications relatively few. From this point on, however, Lenin’s life was about to change irreversibly. He was not afforded the time to complete
State and Revolution
, nor did he return in any detail to theory. For the remainder of his life, practice called.
After the failure of the July Days the propertied classes had attempted to make the most of the weakness and division of the left. Step by step they tried to regain the initiative. Troops were used more frequently to restore ‘order’. Landowners and factory owners became more aggressive. In late August the political conjuncture changed dramatically and quickly. Lenin, despite being in exile, was one of the first to spot what was happening, though, as usual, there was an element of interpreting events as fulfilment of his prophecies. Somewhat like the politics of the military offensive in June, the consequence of the right’s social offensive was that it overreached itself, collapsed and left the way open to a renewed assault by its opponents.
In mid-August, Prime Minister Kerensky convened a State Conference in Moscow to prepare the way for a genuine Constituent Assembly. The conference members were largely selected but some were elected. Its main significance was twofold. It confirmed the polarization of Russian politics with left and right succeeding each in denouncing the other. Second, it demonstrated that only Kerensky was capable of gaining significant support from both sides.
No left-wing champion emerged from this largely bourgeois body, unless one includes the Bolsheviks of Moscow whose general strike made the everyday life of the conference difficult by paralysing city transport among other things. However, a champion of the right, the Commander-in-Chief of the army, General Kornilov, was emerging, to the extent that he was officially muzzled by Kerensky and his true policies, of suppressing army committees, reintroducing the death penalty in the army and subjecting many factories and transport facilities to military discipline, were presented in a speech by an ally, the Cossack Ataman (Chief) Kaledin. Outside the conference a growing cluster of army officers, landowners, factory owners, bankers and a cluster of politicians from the far right to a number of Kadets, turned to Kornilov in the hope that he would ‘restore order’. In late August Kornilov tried to oblige. The flattery and insistence of his camarilla in Moscow pushed him into a foolish adventure which had the exact opposite effect to the one anticipated. He moved troops towards Petrograd which were immediately deemed to be a threat to the soviets in particular and the whole popular revolution in general. The Petrograd Soviet took the lead in disrupting his advance by closing the railways to him and sending propaganda deputations which melted the resolve of his troops, including the Chechens and Ingush of the so-called ‘Wild Division’.
However, the key controversy over the incident surrounds the role of Kerensky. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of whether he had earlier supported Kornilov; the point is that, halfway through the mutiny, Kerensky stood Kornilov down and had him arrested (31 August (OS)). Kornilov was astounded. Kerensky armed the Petrograd Soviet and its supporters and, in a concession to the Soviet, released its arrested members from jail including a delighted Trotsky. Incidentally, Lenin was not tempted to end his exile at this point. Instead, he moved to Helsinki from Razliv.
The Kornilov affair produced two victims and one group of major beneficiaries. The victims were, obviously, Kornilov but also, less obviously, Kerensky. By turning against Kornilov he became instantly hated by the army command and the right in general. However, his turn to the left was not received with joy on the left where he was blamed for having appointed Kornilov in the first place and having apparently supported him in the early stages of the coup. The overwhelming consequence of this was a more rapid than ever decline in the standing of Kerensky and the Provisional Government. In effect there was a political vacuum. It was into this vacuum that the main beneficiaries of the affair, the Bolsheviks, stepped. Lenin’s predictions had been proved right and his policy of no support for the Provisional Government was now beginning to reap massive dividends. For the first time Bolsheviks began to win majorities in key soviets and to take over the leadership of them. Where was the new wave of support coming from?
Ironically, the Kornilov affair ended up helping Kornilov’s enemies by acting as a massive wake-up call to the masses. Soldiers had seen the spectre of the restoration of traditional discipline rise up before their eyes. Workers had been threatened with the introduction of martial law in key factories. Manipulated lockouts and factory closures and the threat of unemployment galvanized workers into further and further steps towards taking over management themselves. Peasants sensed that, if they wanted land, they would have to take it, and soon. Peasant land seizures rose markedly in September. The masses could no longer look for leadership from the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries who had formerly attracted most of their votes but were now, because of their closeness to the government, losing credibility. They were the apparent allies of counter-revolution. On the other hand, because they had stayed outside the political game, the Bolsheviks were not tainted by association with the rapidly collapsing Provisional Government. However, winning the masses’ votes was not, as we shall see, the same as winning over their hearts and minds. Mass support came to the Bolsheviks as the only significant agents of what the masses wanted – peace, bread, land and all power to the soviets. It was emphatically not a conversion to Bolshevik values and to the dreams embodied in
The April Theses
and
State and Revolution
. In reality, some of the masses’ priorities, notably the peasants’ desire for land, were directly contrary to Bolshevik policy which, in this case, for example, supported nationalization of land not private or commune-based ownership. It was on practical issues like abolition of the death penalty that they began to win majorities in soviets, not on long-term projects to restructure humanity. These severe contradictions were to make themselves felt almost from the first moment of Bolshevik power. For the time being, however, they were not noticed. What was increasingly evident was that there was a very significant turn to the left in the popular mood.
Despite his physical separation from events Lenin was among the first to seize on the significance of the new conjuncture. True, he claimed much of it was consistent with his predictions of growing disaffection with the Provisional Government, though even he must have been taken aback by the speed at which events moved in the direction of the left. In September he began to radically change the direction of his policies, though for a while he did not turn towards a consistent alternative course. He did, however, embark on an absolutely extraordinary outpouring of letters, articles and pamphlets.
His first communication to the Central Committee illustrated the new characteristics to perfection. It began:
It is possible that these lines will come too late for events are devel
oping with a rapidity that sometimes makes one’s head spin. I am
writing this on Wednesday, August 30 (OS) and the recipients will
read it no sooner than Friday, September 2 (OS). Still, on chance, I
consider it my duty to write the following.
The Kornilov revolt is a most unexpected (unexpected at such a
moment and in such a form) and downright unbelievably sharp turn
in events.
Like every sharp turn it calls for a revision and change of tactics.
And as with every revision, we must be extra-cautious not to become
unprincipled. [SW 2 196]
The first point made was that, though the Party was fighting against Kornilov and therefore alongside Kerensky’s forces, they still did not support him, they were still not defensists. ‘It is’, he admitted, ‘a rather subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten.’ [SW 2 196] He also urged forcing a more aggressive policy on Kerensky including arresting Kornilov’s ‘allies’ such as Miliukov and shutting down right-wing institutions like the Duma which still had a vestigial existence. Peasants should be urged to demand land and ‘
immediate and unconditional peace must be offered
on
precise
terms’ though how one offers unconditional peace on terms is not explained. Implicit in this was a call to the entire left to support this policy since the new conjuncture had so changed the situation that defensism proper could no longer be justified. Implicit in what he said was that the SRs and Mensheviks might join in this enterprise helping either to end the war or turn it into a revolutionary war. This surprising theme of possible reconcilia
tion was repeated two days later in an article often seen as insincere, entitled, in unLeninist fashion, ‘On Compromises’. The central point is that the Kornilov conjuncture is so special, ‘so abrupt and original a turn’ [SW 2 202] that one might envisage offering ‘a voluntary compromise’ not to their main bourgeois class enemies but ‘to our nearest adversaries, the “ruling” petty-bourgeois-democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks’. [SW 2 202] Once again the subconscious ‘populist’ element of an all-embracing ‘people’s revolution’ surfaced through the impeccably crafted Marxist veneer of Lenin’s ideas. Under the compromise the Bolsheviks ‘would refrain from demanding the immediate transfer of power to the proletariat and poor peasants and from employing revolutionary methods of fighting for this demand’ while the SRs and Mensheviks would abandon the Provisional Government and form a new government responsible to the soviets and proclaim the rapid convening of the Constituent Assembly. [SW 2 202–3] Lenin believed that this would create democratic conditions which could only benefit the Bolsheviks. They would use their freedom to continue to win over, by peaceful methods, the majority of the population. Lenin underlined that such a possibility was a fragile one and things changed so fast it might be outdated before his article was read but, even so, it was a chance that should not be allowed to pass by untried. In fact, Lenin added a postscript saying that the article was delayed by two days before publication and that the moment had in fact gone by, ‘the days when by chance the path of peaceful development became possible have
already
passed.’ [SW 2 206] In fact, he made the same point about the peaceful development of the revolution in an article entitled ‘The Tasks of the Revolution’ written slightly later and published in late September (OS). By then, however, he had another element to his discourse. He wrote:
A possibility very seldom to be met with in the history of revolutions now faces the democracy of Russia, the Soviets and the Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties – the possibility of convening the Constituent Assembly at the appointed date without further delays, of making the country secure against a military and economic catastrophe and of ensuring the peaceful development of the revolution. [CW 26 67]
Once again the possibility of a broad democratic alliance was presented, less as a piece of disinformation, more as a serious possibility. If it were pure camouflage why would the suggestion have disappeared rapidly, as it did, once Lenin moved towards a more robust course? At such a time the propagandist element of proclaiming peaceful development would have been more useful. But he dropped the suggestion. However, there was a new note which had only come into Lenin’s discourse in the last few days, the insistence on the need for revolution in order to avoid catastrophe. The theme is pursued to its greatest extent in the pamphlet
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It
written at the same time, 10–14 September (OS), but not published until after the seizure of power. It opens: ‘Unavoidable catastrophe is threatening Russia’ and goes on ‘Everybody admits this … Yet nothing is being done.’ [SW 2 217] Touching for once on economic questions Lenin catalogues the problems of government paralysis: the need to nationalize and regulate the banks; nationalize cartels; introduce rationing; introduce a heavily graded income tax and thereby struggle against the looming problems of famine and catastrophe. ‘Perish or forge full steam ahead’ are Lenin’s stark choices. [SW 2 253] While these thoughts were not published they do explain a phrase that was. In
One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution
he wrote ‘
Power to the Soviets – this is the only way to make further progress gradual, peaceful and smooth
.’ He continued:
Power to the Soviets means the complete transfer of the country’s administration and economic control into the hands of the workers and peasants, to whom nobody would dare offer resistance and who, through practice, through their own experience, would soon learn how to distribute the land, products and grain properly. [CW 25 73]
Apart from the astonishingly naive assumptions that revolution could improve Russia’s social and economic order rather than add a potentially fatal further dimension of collapse, that nobody would resist a soviet takeover and that the new, unlettered, peasant and worker authorities ‘would soon learn’ the complex arts of economic distribution, the quotation is notable for linking the two themes of fending off catastrophe by seizing power and peaceful development which go hand in hand for the last time. Lenin, in his next missives, shocked his colleagues with a dramatic new line.