"Shame
on those who say: ‘We have no machine with which to replace that old
one which gravitates inexorably to the defence of the bourgeoisie.’ For
we have a machine. And that is the soviets"
 |
| The Bolshevik Central Committee |
The ‘April Days’ resurface again
While Trotsky and the MRC had been battling to win the Garrison’s support, another fierce struggle was being waged between the supporters and opponents of insurrection – but this battle, behind the scenes, was within the ranks of the Bolsheviks’ own Central Committee. The main protagonists were Lenin, still in hiding with renewed instructions being issued by the Minister of Justice for his arrest, and the ‘old Bolsheviks’ Zinoviev and Kamenev.
Just as in the April Days, Lenin found himself in opposition to a Central Committee (C.C.) that he found too passive, paying too much attention to the opinions of the Compromisers and Central Executive Committee and not enough to the views of rank-and-file workers.
“He branded as ‘shameful’ the decision to participate in the Pre-Parliament. He was indignant at the list of Bolshevik candidates for the Constituent Assembly published at the end of September. Too many intellectuals, not enough workers … too many new names … members of the party not tried out in the struggle! Here Lenin considers it necessary to make an exception: Trotsky, ‘for in the first place Trotsky took an internationalist position immediately upon his arrival; in the second place, he fought for amalgamation among the Mezhrayontsi; in the third place, in the difficult July Days he … proved a devoted champion of the party of the revolutionary proletariat’ ” (66).
However, Lenin’s attacks centred on the C.C.’s failure to plan for insurrection.
It had taken Lenin’s struggle for his April Theses and pressure from the ranks of the Party to convince the Bolshevik leadership to break from its policy of conditional support for the Provisional Government and to prepare for socialist revolution. But, while the ‘old Bolsheviks’ may have voted for the theses, they still silently harboured the same Menshevik tendencies that had been nurtured by their long isolation – from both the masses and Lenin – during the early years of the war.
These doubts began to resurface after the July retreat. On August 20th, Stalin, as editor of Pravda, published without dissenting comment an article by Zinoviev entitled ‘What Not to Do’, which argued against the preparation of an insurrection.
Lenin, without naming him directly, countered Zinoviev’s warning about the failure of the Paris Commune by writing: “The reference to the Commune is very superficial and even stupid. For in the first place the Bolsheviks … 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 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 ...” (67).
The wavering reappeared over the question of the Pre-Parliament, with the C.C. only adopting the policy of boycott under pressure from below, aided by Lenin’s letter-writing campaign directed to the party ranks. Given its history of vacillation, Lenin was hardly taken by surprise that, just as it became the urgent task for the Party to resolve, the Bolshevik C.C. wavered on the question of insurrection
State and Revolution
Lenin’s comments on the Paris Commune drew from the careful study that he had completed, while in enforced isolation, to re-establish the class theory of the state. But his pamphlet ‘State and Revolution’ was no abstract work of theory; it was scientific preparation for the October Revolution.
“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 … 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” (68).
The petty bourgeois democrats, and even elements within Bolshevism, had long raised the objection that the proletariat would be unable to master the ‘machinery of state’. But, as Lenin wrote after the defeat of Kornilov: “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 defence of the bourgeoisie.’ For we have a machine. And that is the soviets” (69).
Trotsky summarises Lenin’s conclusion that the working-class cannot simply take hold of the old state machine: “The selection of personages in the old machine, their education, 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” (70).
Few would read Lenin’s pamphlet before the revolution. It was published only after the seizure of power. But Lenin knew that this was vital research both for himself and for Marxism – now and in the future. Lenin even wrote to Kamenev asking him to publish the preparatory notes he had left behind in Stockholm should he be ‘bumped off’ by his enemies.
Lenin had always explained that the Bolsheviks were not ‘Blanquists’ seeking to seize power as a minority. Their task had been to win a majority in the soviets first. After the July Days, Lenin feared that the Compromisers would not let the Bolsheviks get such a majority and that the Party should rely on the factory committees instead. His assessment proved unduly pessimistic but Lenin’s general approach, considering the consequences of the least favourable perspective, proved invaluable.
“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 theoretically 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” (71).
Lenin’s Internationalism
Subsequently buried under the Stalinist bureaucracy’s attempt to justify the anti-Bolshevik idea of building ‘socialism in one country’, Lenin’s analysis was always based on an international perspective, never one confined to Russia alone.
His letters to the Central Committee from his hiding place in Finland emphasised the growing awakening of the European working-class, not least news of uprisings in the German fleet. For Lenin, these were vital indicators that the Russian workers, having taken power, would be able to hold on to it - thanks to a victorious revolutionary movement in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe that would come to their aid.
As Lenin says in his pamphlet, completed on October 1st: ‘Will the Bolsheviks Be Able to Hold the State Power?’: “ ‘There is no power on earth which can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not let themselves be frightened and succeed in seizing the power, from holding it until the victory of the world-wide socialist revolution’ ” (72).
Without such an international revolution, no Bolshevik expected the soviet power to be able to hold out for long. As Lenin said later in 1918: “ ‘Of course the final victory of socialism in one country is impossible … but something else is: … a living example, a getting to work – somewhere in one country’ ” (73), but adding later that year: “ ‘If it should happen … that we were suddenly swept away ... we would have the right to say, without concealing our mistakes, that we used the period of time that fate gave us wholly for the socialist world revolution’ ” (74).
As events turned out, a lack of strong revolutionary leadership meant that the European proletariat was unable to seize power. However, its struggle, combined with the divisions between the imperialist powers themselves, was enough to create a prolonged if fragile equilibrium that allowed the fledgling socialist republic to survive, despite its economic backwardness.
“As a result of the November revolution in Germany, the German troops were compelled to abandon the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Finland. The penetration of the spirit of revolt into the armies of the Entente compelled the French, English and American governments to withdraw their troops from the southern and northern shores of Russia. The proletarian revolution in the west was not victorious, but on its road to victory it protected the Soviet state for a number of years” (75).
Lenin mounts his campaign
From his enforced isolation, Lenin carefully studied the changing tempo of events, analysing election figures and reports of the peasant struggles. His conclusions were expressed in his letters to the C.C. which proposed with increasing urgency the need to organise the insurrection.
“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 expect from it any hazardous steps whatever. On the other hand he greatly feared excessive caution … 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” (76).
In mid-September, on hearing that a majority of peasant delegates at the Democratic Conference had voted against a coalition with the Kadets, Lenin drew the conclusion that the peasantry had only one alternative left to them – to support the Bolsheviks.
Lenin wrote to the C.C.: “ ‘Having got a majority in the soviets of both capitals ... the Bolsheviks can and should seize the state power in their hands. 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 nobody had so imperiously and nakedly set the task of insurrection” (77).
Lenin went as far as proposing that the Bolsheviks deploy troops to surround the theatre where the Democratic Conference was sitting and take over Petrograd. This was a bewildering acceleration of tempo for a Party where a majority of its delegates to the Conference were still, at this stage, opposed to even boycotting this ‘Pre-Parliament’.
Certainly, not a single member of the Bolshevik C.C. was prepared to support Lenin’s plan. Some even wanted all copies of Lenin’s letter burnt! But the C.C. members’ reasons for rejecting the proposal were far from identical. Some of the right-wing were totally opposed to insurrection, others on the left simply felt that this particular plan was ill-judged, others again were simply vacillating and waiting on events.
Unable to persuade the C.C., Lenin sought out, and found, a point of support in Smilga, the young President of the Regional Committee of the Soviets in Finland. Lenin’s new plan for insurrection involved gathering the most reliable forces stationed in Finland and the Baltic fleet to move on Petrograd.
As Trotsky points out: “This new draft of a plan, like the preceding one, was not realised. But it did not go by without effect. With his extremely sharp posing of the question Lenin permitted nobody to evade or manoeuvre. 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 …” (78).
Lenin was taking every opportunity available to him from his isolated position to impress on the party cadres the acuteness of the situation. As his September 29th letter ‘The Crisis is Ripe’ explained, his assessment was that the agrarian movement had reached fever-pitch and that to allow Kerensky to defeat the peasant revolt would ruin the revolution. An urgent insurrection had become a necessity and to delay until the Congress of Soviets, as he judged the party leadership were intending to do, would be ‘utter idiocy’.
To show how serious he was in his criticism, Lenin tendered his resignation from the C.C. “He gives his reasons: the Central Committee has made no response … 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 decision to participate in the Pre-Parliament. I am compelled to request permission to withdraw from the C.C. … and leave myself freedom of agitation in the lower ranks of the party and at the party congress’ ” (79).
Lenin never did formally withdraw from the C.C., but exceptionally went beyond its norms of collective responsibility to widen his internal campaign within the Party. He copied the letter he had written to the C.C. to both the Petrograd and Moscow committees as well as making sure that it, and others following, circulated more widely amongst the key district committees. For example, Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, read the letters to the Vyborg district committee, carefully checking the originals against copies being typed in the local party office for further circulation.
As the ranks began to realise that Lenin had been campaigning for some time for the C.C. to proceed to an insurrection, they added their own pressure on the leadership to support Lenin’s proposal. In early October, a Petrograd party conference agreed to ‘insistently request’ the C.C. prepare for the ‘inevitable insurrection’. On the 8th, Lenin wrote to the Bolshevik delegates to the forthcoming Northern Regional Congress of Soviets proposing a reworked plan – that the Congress itself takes the initiative and assembles the forces it represented – including those of Finland, Reval and the Baltic fleet – to move on Petrograd.
The Congress delegates did not support Lenin’s specific proposal, judging it to be tactically incorrect. “Lenin’s isolation did not prevent him from defining with incomparable penetration the fundamental stages and turns of the movement, but it deprived him of the possibility of making timely estimates of episodic factors and temporary changes” (80). Of course, Lenin himself was acutely aware of such difficulties, saying in one of his letters: “A publicist set somewhat aside by the will of destiny from the main line of history constantly incurs the risk of coming in late or being uninformed” (81).
Nevertheless, despite these inevitable tactical misjudgements, Lenin’s general campaign in favour of insurrection helped put the Bolsheviks on the right road. “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 notepaper minutely inscribed, to raise an agitation for an armed revolution. How could it happen that Lenin [found himself again] … isolated among the leaders of his own party? This cannot 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 … among them the influence of a petty bourgeois environment and of cultural backwardness. To each new situation the party adapted itself only by way of an inner crisis” (82).
The C.C. of October 10th
 |
| Sukhanov's apartment in 2012 |
Sverdlov opened with an organisational report which, by previous arrangement with Lenin, emphasised reports that military headquarters were preparing to march counter-revolutionary troops from the western front to Petrograd. Sverdlov added, encouragingly, that the revolutionary garrison in Minsk was ready to disarm Kerensky’s men and march to the capital themselves.
Lenin then set out his case, passionately warning that, if they waited any longer, the Bolsheviks could lose the vital moment to seize power, that the peasant uprising created a favourable political situation, and that the technical detail of the insurrection must now be agreed on. He proposed using the support offered by the Minsk soldiers and repeated his plan of using the northern congress to initiate ‘decisive action’. Certainly, Lenin argued, the party must not wait for the Congress of Soviets whose assembly might, in any case, be forcibly prevented by government troops.
 |
| A plaque marking the site of the CC meeting |
It was this last point that would indeed be developed to construct the actual insurrection in the capital, rather than Lenin’s scheme. However, for reasons of security no practical details were included in Lenin’s written resolution in any case. However, in discussion, it was concluded that it should take place no later than October 15th when the Northern Region Congress was due to close. Trotsky knew this was a tight timescale but did not want to call for any delay which could bolster the right-wing. In any event, it was certainly understood that the insurrection would have to take place before the Congress of Soviets, still being called at this stage for October 20th.
Lenin had expected to encounter strong opposition. As well as harbouring doubts about some of his ‘old Bolshevik’ comrades, he had little knowledge of the views of Joffé and Uritzky, who had been former Mezhrayontsi with Trotsky. But he was soon reassured that the new Central Committee members were solidly in support of insurrection. “The unanimity with which the Central Committee had rejected the proposal of immediate insurrection in September had been episodic. 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 big victory!” (83).
Although only Zinoviev and Kamenev voted against the resolution at the C.C. meeting, they were not the only party leaders still opposed to insurrection. Even some of those voting in favour still saw insurrection as a more distant goal. Other C.C. members like Rykov and Nogin, absent from the meeting on the 10th, sided with Zinoviev and Kamenev. Some of the leaders of the Bolsheviks’ Military Organisation were particularly strongly opposed to Lenin’s plan, exaggerating the logistical difficulties rather than taking into account the favourable political situation.
But there were Bolshevik members with doubts throughout the Party. Trotsky quotes from an old worker-Bolshevik in the solidly working-class city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where those opposed to the C.C.’s proposal, mainly the intellectuals, would privately go as 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 ...” (84).
While there was still inertia amongst the Petrograd leadership, the hesitations of the Moscow leaders were even greater. Their attitude almost led to the defeat of the insurrection in the city, which eventually took eight days and cost many victims. The Kiev leaders were even less prepared and helped the bourgeoisie to keep hold of power through the Rada.
“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. 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” (85).
Nevertheless, the vital vote at the October 10th Central Committee meeting gave the supporters of insurrection the confidence of knowing that they were arguing for the official position of the party.
The most resolute cadres now came to the fore and took on the task of stepping up the party’s campaign, and preparing its forces, for an overturn.
No comments:
Post a Comment