31) The Soviet Congress

"The October revolution laid the foundation of a new culture taking everybody into consideration, and for that very reason immediately acquiring international significance. Even supposing for a moment that owing to unfavourable circumstances and hostile blows the Soviet régime should be temporarily overthrown, the inexpugnable impress of the October revolution would nevertheless remain upon the whole future development of mankind"

 

The Congress begins 

Throughout the 25th, caucuses of the various party factions awaiting the start of the Congress of Soviets had gathered in Smolny. The Bolshevik delegation was by far the largest, although many of its members were engaged in fighting duties during the day. Recognising that they were in a minority and unsure what to do, the opposing factions had been in no hurry to begin. Their requests for a delay in opening the Congress suited the Bolsheviks perfectly as they were still awaiting the fall of the Winter Palace.

By ten o’clock it wasn't possible to delay any longer. The delegates crammed in to the hall, crowding close, tobacco smoke filling the air. The neatly dressed officers and intellectuals that had been so evident at the June Congress were hardly to be seen. Instead, “a grey colour prevailed uninterruptedly, in costumes and in faces. Many of the city workers had provided themselves with soldiers’ coats. The trench delegates were by no means a pretty picture: long unshaven, in old torn trench-coats, with heavy [fur-hats] on their dishevelled hair … belts hanging loose, and long unoiled boots wrinkled and rusty. The plebeian nation had for the first time sent up an honest representation made in its own image and not retouched” (157).

The political make-up of the Congress had also decisively changed since June when the Compromisers had won 600 votes out of the 832 delegates. Now Trotsky estimates, although the registration statistics were never fully compiled, around 390 of the 650 voting delegates present at the opening of the Congress were Bolsheviks, either as members or sympathisers. Later on the total size of the Congress, including non-voting delegates, reached 900. But, whatever the precise figures, the Bolshevik majority was in no doubt.

Few of the delegates were well-known figures, most simply workers and soldiers who had proved themselves in action and won the confidence of their local soviet. The front’s delegates were almost entirely rank-and-file soldiers whose political lives had only begun over the last few months of revolution. Their rapid maturing carried on even as they waited in the cauldron of Petrograd for the Congress to start.

The Mensheviks, of various hues, had only around 80 delegates. The SRs had between 159 and 190 delegates, a majority already being Left SRs. The Compromisers’ main figures like Tseretelli, Cheidze and Chernov had already opted not to be present at their political funeral.

“A straw-vote taken among the delegates revealed that 505 soviets stood for the transfer of all power to the soviets; 86 for a government of the ‘democracy’; 55 for a coalition; 21 for a coalition, but without the Kadets. Even … these figures give an exaggerated idea of the remains of the Compromisers’ influence. Those for democracy and coalition were soviets from the more backward districts and least important points” (158).

At 10.40 pm, Dan opened the Congress in the name of the Executive Committee. At the Bolsheviks’ suggestion, a praesidium for the Congress was appointed on a proportional basis – 14 Bolsheviks, 7 SRs, 3 Mensheviks and 1 for the ‘United Internationalists’ of the ex-Bolshevik Avilov. The right-wingers immediately declined to participate but seven Left SRs took up their places alongside the Bolsheviks.

The Bolshevik candidates were Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev; Rykov and Nogin from the Moscow Soviet; Lunacharsky and Kollontai as popular speakers; Riazanov from the trade unions; Muranov, an old worker-Bolshevik; Stuchka, head of the Lettish Bolsheviks; Krylenko and Skliansky from the army; and Antonov from the MRC. Trotsky notes that Sverdlov, who certainly merited a place, drew up the list but hadn’t added his own name and so nobody remembered to amend it. The list included the main opponents of the insurrection, showing how the Party nevertheless sought to include all its leading figures.

For the first session, Lenin stayed in the background, preferring to listen and discuss behind the scenes. Kamenev took the president’s chair, his opening remarks accompanied by the distant rumble of the artillery firing from the fortress. The sound of cannon-fire continued as a background to the ensuing discussions with the immediacy of the insurrection also apparent in the hall as hands were raised for votes between bayonets.

The first session’s debates

Martov, the left-Menshevik who had stepped forward when the revolution was in retreat in July, now stepped back as the revolution was leaping forward. He addressed the Congress demanding that fighting ceased and negotiations started to create a government representing the ‘whole democracy’.

Martov’s proposal was agreed by the Left SRs and the Internationalists. But, to the Right’s surprise, the Bolsheviks sent Lunacharsky up to the podium to announce their support as well. Knowing they were in charge of events, they could afford to be seen to compromise, all the better to expose the Right.

And, indeed, the speakers of the Right Mensheviks and SRs now refused to back down, arguing against the insurrection, even questioning the very authority of the assembled Congress. They were working on the assumption that the Bolsheviks would soon be overthrown and were making haste to separate themselves from the Congress as soon as possible.

These speeches irritated, rather than persuaded, delegates who had already had their fill of these bragging leaders over the previous months. A Lettish soldier, Peterson, stepped forward to denounce the Menshevik officers who had been claiming to speak in the name of the army. “The revolution has had enough gab! We want action! The power should be in our hands. Let the impostors leave the congress – the army is through with them!” (159). Other soldiers spoke up to support him.

Just over half of the right-wing faction decided to walk out. But this only came to about 70 delegates – not enough to be noticeable in the body of the hall. Meanwhile some of the previously uncommitted delegates were moving to the left, filling out the ranks of the Left SRs to perhaps 180 by the end of the session.

Nevertheless, Martov’s condemnation of the Bolsheviks’ action had to be answered. Trotsky took the floor to explain: “What has taken place … is an insurrection, not a conspiracy. An insurrection of the popular masses needs no justification. Our insurrection has conquered, and now you propose to us: Renounce your victory: make a compromise. With whom? I ask: With whom ought we to make a compromise? With that pitiful handful who just went out?” (160).

Trotsky proposed a resolution which indicted the Compromisers for their failures, their deception of the peasants over land, their continuation of the war, the economic ruin, and now their abandonment of the soviets.

The Left SRs sent up a speaker to announce, helpfully, that unlike the right-wing, they had not walked out. However, they made clear that Trotsky’s resolution was too sharp for them to support. Again, happy to give ground in the Congress knowing that they had real control outside it, the Bolsheviks agreed not to insist on a vote on the resolution.

The Left SRs, feeling the pressure from the villages, stayed in the Congress. However, after further debate within their faction, Martov’s small group of left Mensheviks finally took their leave after a brief recess in the early morning.

The Congress had reconvened to hear the news that most delegates had been eagerly awaiting – the capture of the Winter Palace. Although word had already spread, Kamenev’s statement was met by delegates with shouts and applause as their tension was released.

A further ovation then greeted the announcement from the representative of the 3rd Bicycle Battalion that they were on the side of the revolution. This was a unit that had marched from the front to defend the government. However, by the time it reached the capital, it was supporting insurrection!

Soon after 5 am, a dog-tired Krylenko then came to give greetings from the 12th Army and to announce that government attempts to bring forces from the Northern front had been broken and that their commander-in-chief, General Cheremissov, had submitted to their military revolutionary committee. John Reed reported that pandemonium broke out with men weeping and embracing each other. The nagging doubts - that perhaps the army was against the revolution – were evaporating.

Lunacharsky then at last had the opportunity to proclaim that: “ ‘The authority of the compromisist Central Executive Committee is at an end. The Provisional Government is deposed. The Congress assumes the power ...’ The Soviet Government proposes immediate peace. It will transfer the land to the peasant, democratise the army, establish control over production, promptly summon the Constituent Assembly, guarantee the right of the nations of Russia to self-determination. ‘The Congress resolves: That all power in the localities goes over to the soviets.’ Every phrase as it is read turns into a salvo of applause” (161).

The representatives attending from individual peasant soviets pricked up their ears at the talk of land and asked that they were now also made official delegates alongside the workers and soldiers so that they could support the proclamation. It was adopted almost unanimously, with just two votes against and twelve abstentions – mainly the tiny forces of the United Jewish Workers party and the United Internationalists.

With hardly strength left to applaud, the delegates finished the session at around 6 am and left to a grey cold dawn, but into a city that was now under a new power.

October 26th

The intellectuals and citizens who had not participated in the previous day’s events rushed to get their morning papers to try and find out the news.

The Kadets’ and Compromisers’ press was still claiming that the Bolsheviks were isolated and would soon be overthrown. But the Bolsheviks hurried to spread the news of the victory to the rest of the country and to urge other soviets to follow Petrograd’s lead.

Smolny became the focal point for all communications. Confiscated cars clogged the surrounding streets, bonfires burned at its gates where armed sentries inspected the passes of the people who came and went conducting the business of revolution.

“The MRC never stopped working for an instant. It received delegates, sent commissars to all corners of the town, set innumerable seals upon orders and commands and credentials. People utterly exhausted of their force, long without sleep or eating, unshaven, in dirty linen, with inflamed eyes, would shout in hoarse voices, gesticulate fantastically, and if they did not fall half dead on the floor, it seemed only thanks to the surrounding chaos which whirled them about and carried them away again. Never since the creation of the world have so many orders been issued. But … in this crazy whirlpool … the most important and necessary things got done. Replacing the old web of administration, the first threads of the new were strung. The revolution grew in strength” (162).

The Bolshevik C.C. met to prepare for that evening’s session of the Congress. It was due to elect a cabinet of ministers for the new government but the title of ‘minister’ sounded too much like the politicians of the old regime. Instead, the fresher sounding title for the new government of the ‘Soviet of People’s Commissars’ was agreed. Negotiations with the Left SRs brought little progress so the C.C. adopted Lenin’s motion to form a government solely of Bolsheviks.

Congress reconvened at 9 pm with an agenda to decide on three questions – peace, land and government. The meeting had a similar appearance to the first session, if slightly less crowded and with fewer weapons on show. But the mood of the delegates was different. The tiredness and hidden doubts of the first session had been replaced by the confidence of knowing that the insurrection had conquered and that now they were about to vote on actions that would really change their lives.

The Congress first ratified measures already taken by the praesidium, including the removal of all the Provisional Government’s commissars from office, the abolition of the death penalty at the front, plus orders to free political prisoners and to arrest Kerensky and Kornilov, who had been allowed to escape from his supposed imprisonment by the old regime.

Peace

To tumultuous applause, Lenin then made his first appearance at Congress to report on the question of peace. He stood gripping the reading-stand for several minutes as the ovation rolled around the hall. Then he began his speech, as Reed reports with a simple statement: ‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order’.

“But for this it was first of all necessary to end the war. From his exile in Switzerland Lenin had thrown out the slogan: Convert the imperialist war into a civil war. Now it was time to convert the victorious civil war into peace. The speaker began immediately by reading the draft of a declaration to be published by the government still to be elected. The text had not been distributed, technical equipment being still very weak. The congress drank in every word of the document as pronounced” (163).

Lenin declared:“ ‘The workers’ and peasants’ government created by the revolution of October 24-25, and resting upon the soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies, proposes to all the warring peoples and their governments to open immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace’. The soviet government abolishes secret diplomacy and under-takes to publish the secret treaties. Everything in those treaties directed toward the accruing of profit and privilege to the Russian landlords and capitalists, and the oppression of other peoples by the Great Russians, ‘the government declares unconditionally and immediately annulled’. In order to enter upon negotiations, it is proposed to conclude an immediate armistice, for not less than 3 months at least” (164).

Lenin explained that the conditions could not be presented as an ultimatum to their adversaries. It had to be absolutely clear that the Bolsheviks were genuinely wishing to negotiate an end to the war. But, at the same time as appealing to governments, the revolution also had to appeal to the workers of Europe to intervene themselves in ending the war - by also taking the revolutionary road to peace and socialism.

The proclamation was agreed unanimously. The assembly looked around at itself proudly. “Pride surges up of its own accord. Eyes shine. All are on their feet. No one is smoking now. It seems as though no one breathes. The præsidium, the delegates, the guests, the sentries, join in a hymn of insurrection and brotherhood. ‘Suddenly, by common impulse’, – the story will soon be told by John Reed, observer and participant, chronicler and poet of the insurrection – ‘we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth lifting unison of the “Internationale”. A grizzled old soldier was sobbing like a child. Alexandra Kollontai rapidly winked the tears back. The immense sound rolled through the hall, burst windows and doors and soared into the quiet sky’ ” (165).

When the singing stopped, someone shouted out Lenin’s name from the back of the hall. “The hall seemed only to have awaited the signal. Long live Lenin! The anxieties endured, the doubts overcome, pride of initiative, triumph of victory, gigantic hopes – all poured out together in one volcanic eruption of gratitude and rapture” (166).

News of the immediate armistice soon travelled around the country, evoking similar scenes of jubilation wherever it was heard.

Land

Lenin then came to the tribune to speak on the land question. Once again, he had the only rough draft of the decree in his hand, so badly written in the rush of events that Lenin had to stop to regain his place.

“The essence of the decree is contained in two lines of the first point: ‘The landlord’s property in the land is annulled immediately and without any indemnity whatever. The landlord … monastery and church estates with all their goods and chattels are given in charge of the town land committees and county soviets of peasant deputies until the Constituent Assembly. The confiscated property is placed as a national possession under the protection of the local soviets. The land of the rank-and-file peasants and rank-and-file Cossacks is protected against confiscation’ ” (167).

Lenin then read out ‘for guidance’ the instructions compiled by the Social Revolutionaries and agreed at the First Congress of Peasant Deputies: “The right to private property in the land is annulled for ever. The use of the land must be equalised – that is, the land to be divided among the toilers according to local conditions …” (168).

Lenin understood that this equal distribution of land, rather than its nationalisation, was far from being a socialist policy. However, the Bolsheviks had to keep step with the changing outlook of the peasantry. Only by maintaining its confidence, and waiting for its illusions to fade, could the socialist government carry through the agrarian revolution successfully. This decree would be a weapon to spread the revolution throughout the country.

The Social Revolutionaries greeted Lenin’s resolution as support for their own policy. “With one vote opposed and eight abstaining, the congress adopts with a new burst of enthusiasm the decree putting an end to serfdom, the very foundation stone of the old Russian culture. Henceforth the agrarian revolution is legalised, and therewith the revolution of the proletariat acquires a mighty basis” (169).

Government

The Congress now came to the last issue – the creation of a government. Kamenev read out the Bolsheviks’ proposal that commissions should be set up to manage each sector of state life and carry out Soviet policy. Each commission was to have a commissar as president who would together form the government as the Soviet of People’s Commissars. It would be accountable to the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee.

“Seven members of the C.C. of the Bolshevik Party were nominated to the first Council of People’s Commissars: Lenin as head of the government, without portfolio; Rykov as People’s Commissar of the Interior; Miliutin as head of the Department of Agriculture; Nogin as chief of Commerce and Industry; Trotsky as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs; Lomov of Justice; Stalin, president of a Commission on the Affairs of the Nationalities; Military and naval affairs were allotted to a committee consisting of Antonov-Ovseënko, Krylenko and Dybenko; the head of the Commissariat of Labour is to be Shliapnikov; the chief of the Department of Education, Lunacharsky; the heavy and ungrateful task of Minister of Provisions is laid upon Theodorovich; the Posts and Telegraph upon the worker, Glebov; the position of People’s Commissar of Communications is ... left open here for an agreement with the organisations of the railroad workers” (170).

As Kamenev read out the list of names each was applauded, particularly Lenin and Trotsky’s, according to John Reed. Remaining outside the Council, Kamenev was instead selected as president of the new Central E.C. and Zinoviev as editor of the official soviet paper.

Avilov from the United Internationalists came up to speak against the proposal and to argue for a coalition government that would not be so ‘isolated’. A speaker from the Left SRs followed in similar vein, saying, contradictorily, that they would support the work of the new government but could not enter it. This way they hoped to keep their hands free to negotiate with the parties that had abandoned the Congress.

Trotsky rose to reply. “They have tried to frighten us more than once with a possible isolation of the Left Wing. Some days back when the question of insurrection was first openly raised, they told us that we were headed for destruction. Against us stood not only the counter-revolutionary bands, but also the defensists of all varieties. The Left Social Revolutionaries, only one wing of them courageously worked with us in the Military Revolutionary Committee. The rest occupied a position of watchful neutrality. And nevertheless even with these unfavourable circumstances and when it seemed that we were abandoned by all, the insurrection triumphed. If the real forces were actually against us, how could it happen that we won the victory almost without bloodshed. No, it is not we who are isolated, but the government and the so-called democrats. Our great superiority as a party lies in the fact that we have formed a coalition with the class forces, creating a union of the workers, soldiers and poorest peasants” (171).

“Avilov says to us: There is little bread, we must have a coalition. The problem of bread is the problem of a programme of action. The struggle with economic collapse demands a definite system from below, and not political groupings on top. Avilov speaks of a union with the peasantry: But again of what peasantry is he talking? … A coalition with the kulak elements of the peasantry we firmly reject in the name of a coalition of the working class and the poorer peasant” (172).

“Openly and before the face of the whole people we raised the banner of insurrection. The political formula of this insurrection was: All power to the soviets – through the Congress of Soviets. They tell us: You did not await the Congress with your uprising. We thought of waiting, but Kerensky would not wait. The counter-revolutionists were not dreaming. We as a party considered this our task: to make it genuinely possible for the Congress of Soviets to seize the power. If the Congress had been surrounded with junkers, how could it have seized the power? In order to achieve this task, a party was needed which would wrench the power from the hands of the counter-revolution and say to you: ‘Here is the power and you’ve got to take it!’ (Stormy and prolonged applause.)” (173).

“For the struggle for peace, says Avilov, we must have a coalition with the Compromisers. At the same time he acknowledges that the Allies do not want to make peace. There are two roads in the struggle for peace. One road is to oppose to the Allied and enemy governments the moral and material force of revolution. The other is a … complete subjection to Allied imperialism. We rest all our hope on the possibility that our revolution will unleash the European revolution. Either the Russian revolution will raise the whirlwind of struggle in the west, or the capitalists of all countries will crush our revolution…” ‘There is a third road’, says a voice from the benches. “The third road,” answers Trotsky, “is the road of the Central Executive Committee – on the one hand sending delegates to the west European workers, and on the other forming a union with the Kishkins and Konovalovs. That is a road of lies and hypocrisy which we will never enter. A union of the oppressed here and everywhere – that is our road” (174).

“The delegates of the Congress, says John Reed, ‘greeted him with an immense crusading acclaim, kindling to the daring of it, with the thought of championing mankind’ ” (175).

One last attack on the revolution was then made by the hostile representative from the Vikzhel, the leadership of the railworkers’ union. He sought to threaten the Bolsheviks that they would use their control of the railways to oppose the new government unless it includes the ‘entire democracy’. It was not an entirely empty threat as Vikzhel still had a basis of support amongst the upper layers of clerks. However, the soviets, too, had a strong and growing influence over the railworkers. Kamenev brusquely dismissed his attack on the democratic decisions of the Congress.

The Council of People’s Commissars was ratified by an overwhelming majority with only a hundred or so Left SRs voting for Avilov’s alternative proposal.

The membership of the new Central Executive Committee was then agreed unanimously. It was to have 101 members, including 62 Bolsheviks and 29 Left SRs plus others to be later added from the peasant soviets and army committees. The Compromise factions that had walked out of Congress were given the right to also send delegates on the basis of proportional representation.

The work could now begin

“The agenda of the Congress was completed! The Soviet government was created. It had its programme. The work could begin. And there was no lack of it. At 5.15 in the morning Kamenev closed the Constituent Congress of the Soviet régime. To the stations! Home! To the front! To the factories and barracks! To the mines and the far-off villages! In the decrees of the Soviet, the delegates will carry the leaven of the proletarian revolution to all corners of the country” (176).

Trotsky concludes by asking: “The chief task of a political régime, according to an English aphorism, is to put the right people in the right positions. How does the experiment of 1917 look from this point of view? During the first two months Russia was ruled, through right of monarchic succession, by a man … who believed in saints’ mummies and submitted to Rasputin. During the next eight months the liberals and democrats attempted from their governmental high places to prove to the people that the revolution had been accomplished in order that all should remain as before. From the 25th of October the man at the head of Russia was Lenin, the greatest figure in Russian political history. He was surrounded by a staff of assistants who, as their most spiteful enemies acknowledge, knew what they wanted and how to fight for their aims. Which of these three systems, in the given concrete conditions, proved capable of putting the right people in the right positions?” (177).

“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarised as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself. Critical and creative thought can boast of its greatest victories up to now in the … sciences. But social relations are still forming in the manner of the coral islands. In comparison with monarchy and other heirlooms … democracy is of course a great conquest, but it leaves the blind play of forces in the social relations of men untouched. It was against this deeper-sphere of the unconscious that the October revolution was the first to raise its hand. The Soviet system wishes to bring aim and plan into the very basis of society, where up to now only accumulated consequences have reigned” (178).

“That aristocratic culture overthrown by the October revolution was in the last analysis only a superficial imitation of higher western models. Remaining inaccessible to the Russian people, it added nothing essential to the treasure-store of humanity, The October revolution laid the foundation of a new culture taking everybody into consideration, and for that very reason immediately acquiring international significance. Even supposing for a moment that owing to unfavourable circumstances and hostile blows the Soviet régime should be temporarily overthrown, the inexpugnable impress of the October revolution would nevertheless remain upon the whole future development of mankind” (179).

Trotsky completes his work with this final paragraph: “The language of the civilised nations has clearly marked off two epochs in the development of Russia. Where the aristocratic culture introduced into world parlance such barbarisms as czar, pogrom … October has internationalised such words as Bolshevik, soviet … This alone justifies the proletarian revolution, if you imagine that it needs justification” (180).

                           ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **