The Russian Revolution (8 page)

The scars left by the October Revolution were deep, and made more painful and visible to the outside world by the emigration of large numbers of educated Russians during and immediately after the Civil War that followed the Bolshevik victory. To the emigres, the Bolshevik Revolution was not so much a tragedy in the Greek sense as an unexpected, undeserved, and essentially unfair disaster. To the Western and especially the American public, it seemed that the Russian people had been cheated of the liberal democracy for which it had so long and nobly struggled. Conspiracy theories explaining the Bolshevik victory gained widespread credence: the most popular of these was that of international Jewish conspiracy, since Trotsky, Zinoviev, and a number of other Bolshevik leaders were Jewish; but another theory, revived in Solzhenitsyn's Lenin in Zurich, pictured the Bolsheviks as pawns of the Germans in a successful plot to take Russia out of the war. Historians, of course, tend to be sceptical of conspiracy theories. But the attitudes that enabled such theories to flourish may also have influenced Western scholarly approaches to the problem. Until quite recently, most historical explanations of the Bolshevik Revolution emphasized its illegitimacy in one way or the other, as if seeking to absolve the Russian people of any responsibility for the event and its consequences.

In the classic Western interpretation of the Bolshevik victory and subsequent evolution of Soviet power, the dens ex machina was the Bolsheviks' secret weapon of party organization and discipline. Lenin's pamphlet What Is To Be Done? (see above, p. 30, setting out the prerequisites for the successful organization of an illegal, conspiratorial party, was usually cited as the basic text; and it was argued that the ideas of What Is To Be Done? moulded the Bolshevik Party in its formative years and continued to determine Bolshevik behaviour even after the final emergence from underground in February 1917. The open, democratic, and pluralist politics of the post-February months in Russia were thus subverted, culminating in the Bolsheviks' unlawful seizure of power by a conspiratorially organized coup in October. The Bolshevik tradition of centralized organization and strict party discipline led the new Soviet regime towards repressive authoritarianism and laid the foundations for Stalin's later totalitarian dictatorship.)

Yet there have always been problems in applying this general concept of the origins of Soviet totalitarianism to the specific historical situation unfolding between February and October 1917. In the first place, the old underground Bolshevik Party was swamped by an influx of new members, outstripping all other political parties in recruitment, especially in the factories and the armed forces. By the middle of 1917, it had become an open mass party, bearing little resemblance to the disciplined elite organization of full-time revolutionaries described in What Is To Be Done? In the second place, neither the party as a whole nor its leadership were united on the most basic policy questions in 1917. In October, for example, disagreements within the party leadership on the desirability of insurrection were so acute that the issue was publicly debated by Bolsheviks in the daily press.

It may well be that the Bolsheviks' greatest strength in 1917 was not strict party organization and discipline (which scarcely existed at this time) but rather the party's stance of intransigent radicalism on the extreme left of the political spectrum. While other socialist and liberal groups jostled for position in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks refused to be co-opted and denounced the politics of coalition and compromise. While other formerly radical politicians called for restraint and responsible, statesmanlike leadership, the Bolsheviks stayed out on the streets with the irresponsible and belligerent revolutionary crowd. As the `dual power' structure disintegrated, discrediting the coalition parties represented in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet leadership, only the Bolsheviks were in a position to benefit. Among the socialist parties, only the Bolsheviks had overcome Marxist scruples, caught the mood of the crowd, and declared their willingness to seize power in the name of the proletarian revolution.

The `dual power' relationship of the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet was usually seen in class terms as an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Its survival depended on continued cooperation between these classes and the politicians claiming to represent them; but it was clear by the summer of 1917 that the shaky consensus of February had been seriously undermined. As urban society became increasingly polarized between a law-and-order right and a revolutionary left, the middle ground of democratic coalition started to crumble. In July, crowds of workers, soldiers, and sailors came on to the Petrograd streets demanding that the Soviet take power in the name of the working class and repudiate the `ten capitalist ministers' of the Provisional Government. In August, the month of General Kornilov's abortive coup, a leading industrialist urged the liberals to be more decisive in defence of their class interests:

We ought to say ... that the present revolution is a bourgeois revolution, that the bourgeois order which exists at the present time is inevitable, and since it is inevitable, one must draw the completely logical conclusion and insist that those who rule the state think in a bourgeois manner and act in a bourgeois manner.2

The `dual power' was conceived as an interim arrangement pending the summoning of a Constituent Assembly. But its disintegration under attack from left and right and the growing polarization of Russian politics raised disturbing questions about the future as well as the present in mid-1917. Was it still reasonable to hope that Russia's political problems could be resolved by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly and the formal institutionalization of parliamentary democracy on the Western model? The Constituent Assembly solution, like the interim `dual power', required a degree of political consensus and agreement on the necessity of compromise. The perceived alternatives to consensus and compromise were dictatorship and civil war. It seemed, nevertheless, that these alternatives were likely to be chosen by a turbulent and sharply polarized society which had thrown off the reins of government.

The February Revolution and `dual power'

In the last week of February, bread shortages, strikes, lockouts, and finally a demonstration in honour of International Women's Day by female workers of the Vyborg district brought a crowd on to the streets of Petrograd that the authorities could not disperse. The Fourth Duma, which had reached the end of its term, petitioned the Emperor once again for a responsible cabinet and asked to remain in session for the duration of the crisis. Both requests were refused; but an unauthorized Duma Committee, dominated by liberals of the Cadet Party and the Progressive Bloc, did in fact remain in session. The Emperor's Ministers held one last, indecisive meeting and then took to their heels, the more cautious of them immediately quitting the capital. Nicholas II himself was absent, visiting Army Headquarters in Mogilev; his response to the crisis was a laconic instruction by telegraph that the disorders should be ended immediately. But the police was disintegrating, and troops from the Petrograd garrison brought into the city to control the crowd had begun to fraternize with it. By the evening of 28 February, Petrograd's Military Commander had to report that the revolutionary crowd had taken over all railway stations, all artillery supplies and, as far as he knew, the whole city; very few reliable troops remained at his disposal, and even his telephones were no longer working.

The Army High Command had two options, either to send in fresh troops who might or might not hold firm or to seek a political solution with the help of the Duma politicians. It chose the latter alternative. At Pskov, on the return journey from Mogilev, Nicholas's train was met by emissaries from the High Command and the Duma who respectfully suggested that the Emperor should abdicate. After some discussion, Nicholas mildly agreed. But, having initially accepted the suggestion that he should abdicate in favour of his son, he thought further about Tsarevich Aleksei's delicate health and decided instead to abdicate on his own behalf and that of Aleksei in favour of his brother, Grand Duke Michael. Always a family man, he spent the remainder of the journey thinking with remarkable calm and political innocence about his future as a private citizen:

He said he would go abroad for the duration of hostilities [in the war against Germany] and then return to Russia, settle in the Crimea and devote himself completely to the education of his son. Some of his advisors doubted whether he would be allowed to do this, but Nicholas replied that nowhere were parents denied the right to care for their children.3

(After reaching the capital, Nicholas was sent to join his family outside Petrograd, and thereafter remained quietly under house arrest while the Provisional Government and the Allies tried to decide what to do with him. No solution was reached. Later, the whole family was sent to Siberia and then to the Urals, still under house arrest but in increasingly difficult circumstances which Nicholas bore with fortitude. In July 1918, after the outbreak of the Civil War, Nicholas and his family were executed on orders of the Bolshevik Urals Soviet.' From the time of his abdication to his death, Nicholas did indeed behave as a private citizen, playing no active political role whatsoever.)

In the days following Nicholas's abdication, the politicians of Petrograd were in a state of high excitement and frenetic activity. Their original intention had been to get rid of Nicholas rather than the monarchy. But Nicholas's abdication on behalf of his son had removed the possibility of a regency during Aleksei's minority; and Grand Duke Michael, being a prudent man, declined the invitation to succeed his brother. De facto, therefore, Russia was no longer a monarchy. It was decided that the country's future form of government would be determined in due course by a Constituent Assembly, and that in the meantime a self-appointed `Provisional Government' would take over the responsibilities of the former imperial Council of Ministers. Prince Georgii Lvov, head of the Zemstvo League and a moderate liberal, became head of the new government. His cabinet included Pavel Milyukov, historian and Cadet Party theoretician, as Foreign Minister, two prominent industrialists as Ministers of Finance and Trade and Industry, and the socialist lawyer Aleksandr Kerensky as Minister of Justice.

The Provisional Government had no electoral mandate, deriving its authority from the now defunct Duma, the consent of the Army High Command, and informal agreements with public organizations like the Zemstvo League and the War Industries Committee. The old Tsarist bureaucracy provided its executive machinery but, as the result of the earlier dissolution of the Duma, it had no supporting legislative body. Given its fragility and lack of formal legitimacy, the new government's assumption of power seemed remarkably easy. The Allied Powers recognized it immediately. Monarchist sentiment seemed to have disappeared overnight in Russia: in the entire Tenth Army, only two officers refused to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. As a liberal politician later recalled,

Individuals and organizations expressed their loyalty to the new power. The Stavka [Army Headquarters] as a whole, followed by the entire commanding staff, recognized the Provisional Government. The Tsarist Ministers and some of the assistant Ministers were imprisoned, but all the other officials remained at their posts. Ministries, offices, banks, in fact the entire political mechanism of Russia never ceased working. In that respect, the [February] coup d'etat passed off so smoothly that even then one felt a vague presentiment that this was not the end, that such a crisis could not pass off so peacefully.5

Indeed, from the very beginning there were reasons to doubt the effectiveness of the transfer of power. The most important reason was that the Provisional Government had a competitor: the February Revolution had produced not one but two self-constituted authorities aspiring to a national role. The second was the Petrograd Soviet, formed on the pattern of the 1905 Petersburg Soviet by workers, soldiers, and socialist politicians. The Soviet was already in session in the Tauride Palace when the formation of the Provisional Government was announced on 2 March.

The dual power relationship of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet emerged spontaneously, and the government accepted it largely because it had no choice. In the most immediate practical terms, a dozen Ministers with no force at their disposal could scarcely have cleared the Palace (the initial meeting place of both the government and the Soviet) of the scruffy throng of workers, soldiers, and sailors who were tramping in and out to make speeches, eat, sleep, argue, and write proclamations; and the mood of the crowd, intermittently bursting into the Soviet Chamber with a captive policeman or former Tsarist Minister to leave at the deputies' feet, must have discouraged the attempt. In broader terms, as War Minister Guchkov explained to the Army's Commander-in-Chief early in March,

The Provisional Government does not possess any real power; and its directives are carried out only to the extent that it is permitted by the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which enjoys all the essential elements of real power, since the troops, the railroads, the post and telegraph are all in its hands. One can say flatly that the Provisional Government exists only so long as it is permitted by the Soviet.'

In the first months, the Provisional Government consisted mainly of liberals, while the Soviet's Executive Committee was dominated by socialist intellectuals, mainly Mensheviks and SRs by party affiliation. Kerensky, a Provisional Government member but also a socialist, who had been active in setting up both institutions, served as liaison between them. The socialists of the Soviet intended to act as watchdogs over the Provisional Government, protecting the interests of the working class until such time as the bourgeois revolution had run its course. This deference to the bourgeoisie was partly the result of the socialists' good Marxist education and partly a product of caution and uncertainty. As Nikolai Sukhanov, one of the Soviet's Menshevik leaders, noted, there was likely to be trouble ahead, and better that the liberals take the responsibility and, if necessary, the blame: