"We gave the slogan of a peaceful demonstration. But the Petrograd Committee aimed a wee bit too far to the left. Along with the correct slogan ‘Long Live the Soviets!’ they gave a wrong one, ‘Down with the Provisional Government!’. A moment of action is no time to aim ‘a wee bit too far to the left’"
Miliukov’s ‘note’ sparks a crisis
The Bolsheviks' internal debate was taking place against a background of growing dissatisfaction with the government. April 18th (May 1st in the West) was met with large May Day demonstrations and strikes in every city in Russia. Once again, all strata of the population marched together, the common people and the property-owners, but with the workers dominating. Soldiers marched alongside German war-prisoners, giving hope for the future. Nevertheless, under the triumphal discipline of the demonstration, the mood was tense.
''It was becoming harder and harder to live. Prices had risen alarmingly; the workers were demanding a minimum wage; the bosses were resisting; the number of conflicts in the factory was continually growing; the food situation was getting worse; bread rations were being cut down; cereal cards had been introduced; dissatisfaction in the garrison had grown. The district staff, making ready to bridle the soldiers, was removing the more revolutionary units from Petrograd. But the root of all evils was the war, of which no end was to be seen. When will the revolution bring peace? ” (94).
The Bolsheviks were being listened to more attentively if still with hostility from some. Indeed, the Bolshevik banners stood out more strongly on the May Day demonstration than they had on the funeral procession twenty-five days before. The Mariinsky Palace, home of the Provisional Government, was adorned with a large red streamer saying “Long Live the Third international!” However, not even the bold Bolsheviks who had put up that streamer could have imagined that the appearance of national unity was about to be split open - by, as was bound to happen eventually, the problem of the war. No other than Miliukov lit the fuse.
Encouraged by the entry of America into the war on March 23rd Miliukov had spoken out on his aim to seize Armenia, Constantinople, Persia and so on. This frank description by the ‘revolutionary’ Minister of Foreign Affairs of his predatory foreign policy caused alarm in the Soviets. So, on March 27th, the government had agreed to produce a declaration clarifying that “the goal of free Russia is not domination over other peoples, nor depriving them of their national heritage, nor violent seizure of alien territory”. This sop to the Compromisers was rendered totally meaningless by the addition of the phrase, “nevertheless complete observance of the obligations undertaken to our Allies” (95). In other words, as Trotsky puts it: “We promise not to rob anybody whom we don't need to” (96) !
However, this empty declaration still worried the Allies who sent alarmed messages to Petrograd, along with the French ‘socialist’ traitor Albert Thomas who was given the job of convincing the Soviet leadership of the need for imperialist war. This panic was, of course, exactly what Miliukov had hoped for. “His fundamental idea was to use the war against the revolution, and the first task upon this road was to demoralise the democracy” (97). He wanted to expose the Compromisers and force them into a situation where they had to make a clear choice between Bolshevism and imperialism.
Now Miliukov prepared another bombshell. The Soviet E.C. had been promised that Miliukov would send a note to the Allies confirming the March 27th declaration. In fact the note he sent on April 18th, composed with the help of Thomas and the Allied diplomats, disavowed that declaration. It explained that nobody should have “the slightest reason to think that the revolution which had occurred entailed a weakening of the role of Russia in the common struggle of the Allies. Quite the contrary - the universal desire to carry the world war through to a decisive victory had only been strengthened”. It continued to note that the victors “will find means to attain those guarantees and sanctions, which are necessary for the prevention of bloody conflicts in the future” (98). ‘Guarantees and sanctions’ was of course diplomatic language for aggressive ‘annexations and indemnities’.
Miliukov had ignored the Contact Commission and had sent the note to the Soviet E.C. only at the same time as he had sent it to the newspapers, so giving the E.C. no time to think up excuses before the masses got to hear the news. As Miliukov had hoped, the Compromisers were left squirming and trying to find a way of saving face, particularly as the whole government, including Kerensky, had taken responsibility for the note.
Tseretelli and Skobelev tried desperately to find good points in the note but to no avail. However, as the E.C. stalled, another force decided its voice should be heard - the masses.
The April demonstrations
On the afternoon of April 20th the soldiers took to the streets, 25-30,000 in all, and all armed, their bayonets holding streamers demanding the resignation of Miliukov and Guchkov. The commotion soon spread to the workers districts’ and whole factories joined the soldiers in the streets.
The sharp outbreak of the demonstration reflected the sudden realisation by the masses that the government could have been deceiving them all along. Up to now they had given it the benefit of the doubt, especially as it included Kerensky after all. The Bolsheviks had been the only ones saying that the government wanted the war prolonged for the sake of capitalist robbery, but their leader came straight to Petrograd from Berlin. Could it be that Lenin was right and Kerensky wrong after all?
“Meanwhile the progressive factories and regiments were more and more firmly adopting the Bolshevik slogans of a peace policy: publication of the secret treaties; break with the plans of conquest of the Entente; open proposal of immediate peace to all warring countries'' (99).
Lenin’s approach to Miliukov's support for the Allies could already be seen in a pamphlet produced in early April describing the attitude of the different parties to the Czar's war treaties. The Kadets, Lenin said, must not allow these treaties to be published since “Russian capital cannot afford to reveal its shady affairs to the public”. The Compromisers are against the treaties but hope ''it may be possible to influence the capitalist government”. The Bolsheviks on the other hand understand that “the whole point is to enlighten the masses as to the utter hopelessness of expecting anything in this respect from capitalist governments, and as to the necessity of the power being transferred to the proletariat and the poor peasants” (100).
Now, on April 20th, Lenin wrote for Pravda that “the present Soviet … is faced with the alternative: either to swallow the pill offered by Guchkov and Miliukov … or to reject Miliukov’s note which would mean breaking with the old policy of confidence and adopting the course proposed by Pravda … workers and soldiers you must now loudly declare that there must be only one power in the country - the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” (101).
However, some of the Petrograd Bolsheviks mistook the anger of the masses who honestly believed in 'defencism' as a sign of a far more revolutionary understanding and added the adventurist slogan of ‘Down with the Provisional Government’. The presence of this slogan had led to a strain of armed insurrection amongst the more left-wing demonstrators and attempts were made to enter the Mariinsky Palace to arrest the government ministers.
The majority of the demonstrators simply wanted to send a warning to the government and to strengthen the position of Kerensky against Miliukov. The bourgeoisie tried to take advantage of the situation by escalating events into armed clashes saying that they were protecting the government against attempts to start a civil war.
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| Nevskiy Prospeky in 2012 |
“No, that day was not in the least like a manifestation of national unity. Two worlds stood face to face. Two human floods - one for Constantinople, one for Peace - had issued from different parts of the town. Different in social composition, not a bit similar in external appearance, and with hostile inscriptions on their placards, as they clashed together they brought into play fists, clubs, and even firearms” (102).
Finally the news spread that General Kornilov, no doubt under instructions from the Kadets, was moving cannon onto the Square in front of the Mariinsky Palace ready to fire on the demonstrators.
The evening before, on the 20th, Miliukov's plan to scare the Soviet leadership into supporting the bourgeoisie seemed to be working. At a joint meeting of the E.C. and the Government, Prince Lvov had threatened to resign in the face of the agitation against the ‘note’. The horrified Compromisers of course drew back, readily accepted a worthless ‘explanation’ of Miliukov's note and on the 21st had spent their time trying to persuade the demonstrators to disperse.
However, with Kornilov's guns ready, even the E.C. could see that their own heads might now be crushed, not just the workers’ and soldiers’. The E.C. ordered the soldiers in Kornilov's hands to return to barracks and the crisis was defused. However, as an illustration of the changing balance of forces, this event set a precedent which meant that from now on every order for the despatch of troops had to have official Soviet sanction.
The April crisis seemed to have passed without any lasting effects. The Soviet E.C. hastily met on the evening of the 21st and, having successfully held back the masses, voted by 34 to 19 to declare the matter of the ‘note’ settled. The Bolshevik, Feodorov, had gained a good deal of support when he had called for the Soviets to seize the power at a plenary session of the Soviet the evening before. Now the E.C.’s position was carried at the Petrograd Soviet by a huge majority.
The intermediate soldier mass had for a brief period swung towards the proletariat, causing the crisis, but had now swung back towards the Soviet leadership and hence, in effect, the bourgeoisie. However, as Lenin pointed out to the party, this vacillation of the petty-bourgeois layers was the music of the future. Under the pressure of events they would continue to swing between bourgeoisie and proletariat, causing more crises. The job of the Bolsheviks was to carry on their agitation, particularly amongst the most backward layers that had supported the bourgeoisie in the April Days, until the intermediate strata swung decisively to the side of the workers.
Although at an early stage, the experience of the April days nevertheless had lasting effects on the consciousness of the masses, accelerating the pace of events. Meetings and protests opposing the policy of Miliukov had taken place all over Russia. Just as in February itself, and in the March struggle for the eight-hour day, the April demonstration was a warning to the leadership, action taken by direct intervention of the masses without the ‘permission’ of the Soviet parties.
The Bolshevik party had come out of the April crisis strengthened by events, despite the adventurist policy of some of the Petrograd Committee. The party had been unprepared for the crisis, still finishing its own internal debate, and the call for the demonstration on the 21st had not had sufficiently clear aims. Afterwards Lenin criticised the Petrograd leadership, saying: “You can overthrow one who is known to the people as a tyrant; but there are no tyrants now; the cannon and the rifles are in the hands of the soldiers, not the capitalists. The capitalists are not prevailing with violence, but deceit, and you can’t talk about violence – it’s mere nonsense. We gave the slogan of a peaceful demonstration. We wanted only to make a peaceful reconnoitre of the enemy’s strength, not to give battle. But the Petrograd Committee aimed a wee bit too far to the left. Along with the correct slogan ‘Long Live the Soviets!’ they gave a wrong one, ‘Down with the Provisional Government!’. A moment of action is no time to aim ‘a wee bit too far to the left’. We look upon that as the greatest crime, disorganisation” (103).
Of course, Lenin was no pacifist. With a different correlation of forces the Petrograd Committee would have been entirely correct. But for now the task was still to “patiently explain”. As the Bolshevik C.C. resolution on April 22nd said: “We shall favour the transfer of power to the proletarians and semi-proletarians only when the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies adopt our policy and are willing to take power into their hands” (104).
The party organisation had clearly not been strong enough in the April Days but it led to vital recruitment into the party, workers transferring their names from Mensheviks to Bolsheviks. The district soviets, being closer to the factories, first showed this sharp turn to the left with the Bolsheviks finding themselves as a majority in a number of Soviets in Vyborg and elsewhere. By the beginning of May, Sukhanov estimated that a third of the Petrograd proletariat were supporting the Bolsheviks - and that the most active third.
As Trotsky concludes: “The March formlessness had disappeared; political lines were sharpening; the ‘fantastic’ theses of Lenin were taking flesh in the Petrograd workers’ districts” (105).
The Coalition Government forms
The Soviet leaders may not have wanted the power, but the events of April 21st had shown once again that, if only they would take it, the real power lay with the Soviet. “The April Days ... had unequivocally lifted the curtain on the impotence of the Provisional Government, showing that it had no serious support whatever in the capital” (106).
The lessons of the April events were absorbed by many workers and soldiers, but not so often by their soviet delegates. This explains the mismatch between the votes in the Soviet at the end of the April Days and the changed views of the masses. Even Soviet representation can lag behind the mood of the masses. It often takes major events like those of April to teach workers that their representative needs changing. It took a little time for delegates to be reselected, although this was now a process that many workers and Bolsheviks were calling for.
Meanwhile, the action of the masses had pushed the workers’ leaders further to the right. The E.C. united behind conservatives like Tseretelli leaving radicals like Sukhanov to one side. Indeed, the compromise between the Soviet E.C. and the bourgeoisie was forced to take its next logical step - that of coalition government.
The liberals felt too weak to rule without the direct participation of the 'socialists'. The Compromisers, despite much soul-searching had, in the last analysis, no choice but to accept, demanding only an end to Miliukov's predatory foreign policy. So, in order to save the bourgeoisie, on May 2nd its recognised leader, Miliukov, was pushed out of the government, abandoned by the democrats, the Allies and his own Kadet Party.
“Miliukov really did not deserve such cruel punishment - at least not from these hands. But the coalition demanded a purification sacrifice. In cutting off Miliukov, the Coalition purified itself from the sins of imperialism” (107). Along with Miliukov, Kornilov and Guchkov had already resigned, so that the slogans of April 20th had been more than realised by early May.
Miliukov had failed in his attempt to push the revolution into the civil war that he hoped would give the power back to the reaction. Now, since the Compromisers did not want to take the power, the road of compromise and coalition was the only one left after the April crisis.
For weeks now it had been clear that in the provinces the local soviets were really in charge of events, not the government commissars. The correlation of forces meant that the socialists were being forced against their will to take control of administration, fix prices, and make investigations and arrests and so on. Now the Provisional Government’s impotence had also been revealed in Petrograd itself.
The bourgeoisie desperately needed the soviet leaders to assume some direct responsibility for events so as to deflect some of the criticism away from the government and also to hold back the workers.
The Allied embassies also exerted pressure for a Coalition government, hoping it would be able to call for an offensive on the Russian front. Such an attack would muddy the image of the revolution in the eyes of the British and French soldiers who were looking to it as a hope for peace. A delegation of Allied patriotic ‘socialists’ was sent to Russia to add to the work of Thomas in convincing the Soviet of the need for war.
Nevertheless, a layer of the Soviet leaders, particularly the Mensheviks, tried to resist the pressure for coalition. This was not, of course, through a principled opposition to alliances with the bourgeoisie but because they rightly feared that it would make it easier for the masses to lose their illusions about the dual power.
At this stage, however, “the masses, in so far as they were not yet for the Bolsheviks, stood solid for the entrance of the socialists into the government. If it is a good thing to have Kerensky as a minister, then so much better six Kerenskys'' (108).
So the joint pressure of the masses and the bourgeoisie forced the E.C. into the Coalition Government. However, they still managed to wriggle out of taking full responsibility by only accepting six out of the fifteen portfolios in the new government. Prince Lvov remained as Premier with Miliukov’s place taken by Tereschenko. The Social-Revolutionary Chernov became Minister of Agriculture, Kerensky the Minister of War, while Tseretelli took just the portfolio of Posts and Telegraphs to leave himself time for the E.C.
Skobelev became Minister of Labour while, to give balance, a big Moscow industrialist, Konovalov, became Minister of Trade and Industry. In fact Konovalov soon resigned, unable to alter the ailing economy in the direction of his bourgeois friends. As for Skobelev, he soon forgot his initial rhetoric against capitalist profit and settled down to the job of quelling strikes and restraining the workers. The Declaration of the new government amounted to very little, its only definite intention being, not surprisingly, to prepare the army “for defensive and offensive activity to prevent the possible defeat of Russia and her Allies” (109).
Buchanan, the British ambassador, wrote: “The Coalition Government in Russia is for us the last, and almost the only, hope for salvation of the military situation on that front” (110). Indeed, the Allied diplomats had every reason to be pleased with the efforts of Kerensky and Tseretelli to convince the army that an offensive would help bring peace! Kerensky toured the front to agitate in favour of the offensives telling the soldiers that: “You will carry on the points of your bayonets – peace” (111).
Gradually the E.C. became reconciled to supporting the offensive, formal support being given at the All-Russian Soviet Congress in early June. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, agitated boldly against both the offensive and the Coalition Government. Lenin, speaking at the June Congress, answered accusations that the Bolsheviks were in favour of a separate peace with Germany by saying: “We say: No separate peace, not with any capitalists, and least of all with the Russian capitalists. But the Provisional Government has made a separate peace with the Russian capitalists. Down with that separate peace!” (112).
Lenin explained through Pravda that the only way to arrive at a just peace was through a revolution transferring power to the Soviets that could make an appeal to the oppressed classes of other countries for peace without annexations and seizures. Workers could never believe such an appeal from a Provisional Government containing capitalists who, by their very nature, fight for robbery of lands and colonies. “Should the capitalists ... try to resist the peace, the oppressed classes of Russia and other countries will not shrink from a revolutionary war against the capitalists!” (113).
Again Lenin showed that the questions of peace and socialism were tied to the international revolution. This might not seem an easy solution, but, as Lenin said in a speech on May 14th: “Nothing but a workers’ revolution in several countries can defeat this war. The war is not a game, it is an appalling thing taking toll of millions of lives, and it is not to be ended easily” (114).
As for the Coalition, Lenin, writing in Pravda, warned: “May 6th was a triumph for the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois government was on the verge of defeat. The bourgeoisie resorted to a skilful manoeuvre ... in which the bourgeois began to do through [the socialists] what the bourgeoisie could never have done without them” (115).
Trotsky, speaking to the Petrograd Soviet session that approved the coalition on May 5th, the day after he arrived from America, warned “that the ‘double sovereignty’ is not destroyed, but 'merely transferred into the ministry’ ”, adding in conclusion, “three revolutionary articles of faith; do not trust the bourgeoisie; control the leaders; rely only on your own force” (116).
As Trotsky explains: “In entering the Coalition, the Compromisers counted on a peaceful and gradual dissolution of the soviet system. They imagined that the power of the soviets, concentrated in their persons, would now flow over into the official government. The Coalition Government was ... to become a bridge to the bourgeois parliamentary republic” (117).
However, in a period of revolution, this perspective was impossible. The soviets were not about to disappear, they were, despite their leaders, the fighting organisations of the oppressed classes with real power in society. So, for example, the new city dumas, although predominantly given Menshevik and S-R majorities in the elections, were unable to take over from the soviets. “The municipal governments gave equal representation to all classes of the population, reduced to the abstraction of citizenship, and behaved in the revolutionary situation very much like a diplomatic conference expressing itself in qualified and hypocritical language while the hostile camps represented by it are feverishly preparing for battle” (118).
At the same time, the Coalition Government was not hurrying to set up a parliamentary regime in which the Constituent Assembly would be dominated by non-bourgeois parties - as the elected city dumas were. The discussions about the electoral law for the Assembly went on endlessly, deliberately never deciding on a date for elections. While the masses discussed in the Soviets, and the right-wing organised in their own secret meetings, the Coalition Government continued as an impotent and hypocritical disguise for the dual power regime.
The Offensive
Such a dual power regime could not possibly organise a strong military force at the front. Like the rest of society, the army was split on class lines with a reactionary officer caste taken from the privileged classes and the mass of the soldiers from the oppressed classes.
The soldiers’ committees, created by ‘Order No. 1’, were becoming filled with Compromisers and were playing the same role as the soviet leadership in trying to blunt the soldiers’ revolutionary will. The majority of the commanding staff found themselves unable to impose their will on the revolutionary soldiers.
Trotsky notes, looking ahead to the later Civil War: “It was only possible either to take the commanding corps as it was from the nobility and the bourgeoisie, as the Whites did, or bring forward and train up a new one on the basis of proletarian recruiting, as did the Bolsheviks. The petty bourgeois democracy could do neither one thing nor the other. All they could do was to persuade, plead, and deceive everybody, and when nothing came out of it, turn over the power in despair to the reactionary officers, and let them teach the people the correct revolutionary ideas” (119).
“Compromisism in a time of revolution is a policy of feverish scurrying back and forth between classes. Kerensky was the incarnation of scurrying back and forth. Placed at the head of an army, an institution unthinkable without a clear and concise regime, Kerensky became the immediate instrument of its disintegration” (120). Kerensky carried out endless and pointless changes in the top commanders, hastening the breakdown of the army.
The soldiers themselves did not want an offensive, and no threats from their commanders were about to change their minds - nothing could be a worse threat than death in the trenches. The mood was such that it seemed that one bold soldier could convince a whole regiment not to support the offensive. Many regiments declared that they would not fight.
A delegation of patriotic S-R sailors from the Black Sea attempted to convince the northern front of the need for attack, but without success. On the other hand, a delegation from the Baltic fleet travelled south and persuaded the Sebastopol sailors to disarm their commanders!
The more the Compromisers in the soldiers’ committees attempted to convince the ranks of the offensive, the more their authority declined. A new note was sounded when “the commander of the 61st Regiment tried to frighten his soldiers with punishment at the hands of the government. One of the soldiers answered: ‘We overthrew the former government, we'll kick out Kerensky' ” (121).
It was clear to the commanding staff that the offensive would be a failure. As Trotsky wrote, the government could not decide on “an immediate annulment of landlordship - that is, the sole measure which would convince the most backward peasant that this revolution is his revolution; in such material and spiritual conditions an offensive must inevitably have the character of an adventure” (122).
The bourgeoisie, while loudly agitating for the war, actually refused to put their money where their mouths were and supply the so-called ‘Liberty Loan’. Even some of the Allied commanders realised the Russian army was hopelessly split but still the Allies continued to push for the offensive, even threatening to stop military supplies if it did not start soon.
The offensive was being mounted for political reasons, not military ones, to turn the masses’ interests to war and against revolution. There was one last hope for the officers that an attack would change the psychology of the ranks and that a few victories might give them hope.
The offensive began on June 16th on the south-western front, the other fronts intending to join in soon after.
As expected, the offensive soon began to collapse and the planned advances on the other fronts in July never really materialised. A few early successes against thin German defences did raise morale at first, the soldiers feeling that this would strengthen Russia’s negotiating position for peace. It also brought joy to the French stock-exchange, as the socialist newspapers happily announced. Trotsky notes wryly: “Those socialists were trying to estimate the stability of the revolution by the stock-ticker. But history teaches that bourses feel better the worse it goes with revolutions” (123)!
After a few kilometres advance, the Germans began to push the Russian army back, retreats and desertions began and, with the last hopes of peace seemingly gone, the front collapsed.
“One of the companies refused even to toss a leaflet to the enemy announcing the capture of Galich, until a soldier could be found to translate the German text into Russian. In that it expressed the utter lack of confidence of the soldier mass in its ruling staff, both the old one and the February one” (124).
The workers and garrison of Petrograd had never had any illusions in the offensive. The Vyborg Soviet, now completely dominated by the Bolsheviks, declared on June 24th: “We … protest against the adventure of the Provisional Government, which is conducting an offensive for the old robber treaties ... and we lay the whole responsibility for this policy on the Provisional Government and the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties supporting it” (125).
The offensive accelerated the turn of the soviets towards the Bolsheviks. The Soviet adopted a resolution greeting the offensive on June 20th, but by only 472 votes against 271, with 39 abstaining. “The Bolsheviks, together with the left groups of Mensheviks and S-R's, constitute already two-fifths of the Soviet. This means that in the factories and the barracks the opponents of the offensive are already an indubitable majority” (126).
Soldiers dragged patriotic bourgeois demonstrators off the Nevsky and threatened them with being sent to the front! A machine-gun regiment declared that it would go to the front “only when the war shall have a revolutionary character” (127) and that if anyone tried to disband them, they would disband the Provisional Government! This threatening tone again showed how the masses were shifting to the left.
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