8) The Soviet Power

"These complacent rulers of destiny thought that in entrusting the leadership to them the soviets had essentially completed their task … The masses are long-suffering but they are not clay out of which you can fashion anything you want to. Moreover, in a revolutionary epoch they learn fast. In that lies the power of a revolution"

The Nature of the ‘Dual Power’

The confusing political situation that the February revolution had created was certainly not unique in history. The simultaneous existence of two conflicting governmental organisations, known to Marxism as "dual power" is a fundamental element of a revolutionary period. Indeed, a dual power can only exist at such a time, when two irreconcilable classes are fighting each other for control of society.

In normal times, society needs a single government in order to advance, but that only happens when a strong ruling class is able to stamp its economic and political regime on the whole of society. In a time of revolution, when the old ideas are being challenged, the new revolutionary class strives to lay claim to state power.

It will either create its own alternative state organisation, or take over and adapt existing institutions. However, such a transformation cannot happen overnight. A period of instability continues where the two conflicting half-ruling classes struggle to take full control. The actual amount of power falling to either side at any particular time depends on the balance of forces in the struggle. This double sovereignty may be endured for some time, but will inevitably lead to open conflict, even to civil war.

Trotsky explains how the English Revolution of the seventeenth century became exactly such a civil war. A new bourgeois class had gradually obtained more and more economic power until it came to a point where it had to do battle with the old privileged classes of the monarchy, aristocrats and bishops in order to make any further advance. The dual power turned into open civil war between the royal power based in Oxford, and the new power based around Parliament and the City of London.

However, the victorious Parliamentarians were soon confronted with a new challenger - the 'Independents', based on the parliamentary army, representing the petty bourgeoisie, the craftsmen and farmers. A new dual power followed, with the new class again relying on a new state organisation, in this case the council of soldiers' and officers' deputies of the Independents' ‘New Model Army'.

This double sovereignty was ended by the victory of this army, leading to the dictatorship of Cromwell. A third dual power was threatened by the struggle of the lower ranks of the army, under the leadership of the Levellers but this extreme left-wing of the revolution was soon defeated.

Just like their English counterparts, the Russian bourgeoisie entered the revolution having already concentrated a good share of the state power in its hands. Thanks to its position in the Military-industrial Committees and local government bodies, the bourgeoisie had gained more and more economic and political control, setting up an initial dual power that quickly led to the defeat of czarism in February. However, and far more rapidly than in the English Civil War, a new political force arose to challenge the capitalists’ power.

Another dual power was set up between conflicting state organisations, the Provisional Government acting for the bourgeoisie, and the Soviet, acting in the interests of the workers and peasants. As Lenin pointed out, this was an entirely new type of power because it was “based on a revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people from below, and not on a law enacted by a centralised state power".

However, in previous revolutions the dual power had arisen as a natural stage in the struggle with each side trying to replace the double sovereignty with its own rule. The peculiarity of the February Revolution was that "we see the official democracy consciously and intentionally creating a two-power system, dodging with all its might the transfer of power into its own hands. The double sovereignty is created, or so it seems at a glance, not as a result of a struggle of classes for power, but as the result of a voluntary yielding of power by one class to another. If you look deeper, the twofold rule of the Provisional Government and the Executive Committee had the character of a mere reflection ... (it) only reflected the still concealed double sovereignty of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. When the Bolsheviks displace the Compromisers at the head of the Soviet ... then that concealed double sovereignty will come to the surface, and this will be the eve of the October Revolution" (18).

The support for the ‘Compromisers’

In order to understand how it could be possible for the 'Compromisers' in the Soviet leadership to conceal the real nature of the struggle for so long, the characteristics of the two parties that at first dominated the soviets must be remembered.

The Mensheviks, based on the left-wing of the radical intelligentsia and the more moderate upper layer of the working-class, used Marxist phraseology but as an argument for the inevitability of bourgeois development in Russia.

The Social Revolutionaries (S-R's) on the other hand, had their roots in the peasantry. The S-R leaders spoke out against Marxism, adopting confused Narodnik ideas that reflected the contradictory pressures facing the Russian peasant at that time. After February the S-R's gained enormous support in the country, thanks partly to its slogan “Land and Freedom”.

Its support among the peasantry meant that the majority of the soldiers also voted for the S-R’s. This also gave the S-R’s a dominant influence in the city soviets, thanks to the support of the soldiers’ delegates.

In reality, the initial dominance of this party simply reflected the confused and immature nature of the revolution at this point. “Everybody who had not inherited from the pre-revolutionary past sufficient reasons to vote for the Kadets or the Bolsheviks voted for the Social-Revolutionaries. But the Kadets stood inside a closed circle of property owners; and the Bolsheviks were still few, misunderstood and even terrifying. To vote for the Social Revolutionaries meant to vote for the revolution in general, and involved no further obligation” (19).

The masses took the line of least resistance, in this case the S-R’s. They seemed to offer the easiest promise of change, without demanding too much further struggle. Their support in the army also raised their status among layers of workers and townspeople who, seeking to maintain the hard-fought ties with the soldiers, also gave them their vote.

In fact, the central nucleus of the S-R’s was far more closely linked with the liberal bourgeoisie than with the revolutionary masses. After the revolution, this radical upper layer present in the S-R’s had been swollen by a flood of careerists, often young officers and petty military officials.

These liberals had gained their influence over the peasantry by adding a socialist tinge to their bourgeois beliefs. Indeed, how else could the rotten Russian bourgeoisie gain any support? However, now the Social Revolutionaries, along with the Mensheviks who were playing the same role amongst the working-class, were beginning to worry that the effect of these socialist phrases was going further than they intended!

“… the democracy did not trust its own support … and worst of all dreaded what they called ‘anarchy’, that is, that having seized the power, they might along with the power prove a mere plaything of the so-called unbridled elements” (20).

“In its entirety this democratic fright was a reflection of the very real danger to the possessing classes caused by a movement of the oppressed, a danger which united them in a single camp, the bourgeois-landlord reaction. The bloc of the S-R’s with the government of the landlord Lvov signalised their break with the agrarian revolution, just as the bloc of the Mensheviks with the industrialists and bankers of the type of Guchkov, Tereschenko and Konovalov, meant their break with the proletarian movement. In these circumstances the union of the Mensheviks and S-R’s meant not a co-operation of proletariat and peasantry, but a coalition of those parties which had broken with the proletariat and the peasants respectively, for the sake of a bloc with the possessing classes” (21).

The make-up of the soviets

The other thing that must be understood to explain the peculiar nature of the dual power is the composition of both the Soviet Executive Committee and the elected delegations to the Soviet itself.

The 1905 Soviet had been formed out of a General Strike so that both its membership and leadership had been selected in the heat of battle. Trotsky himself became its leading figure. The Soviet of 1917 had been formed only after the February victory and was led by a self-appointed E.C. set up independently of the active masses.

These leaders, misusing the masses’ old memories of 1905, nevertheless gained the authority in the eyes of the workers that the proletariat readily gives to the leadership of its traditional organisations.

In addition, the actual soviet delegates rarely reflected the aspirations of the revolutionary activists that had actually led the February struggles on the streets of Petrograd. Now that the initial battle was over, the broader, previously inactive masses dominated in the elections for soviet delegates. Less revolutionary in mood, without the same experience of struggle, these less active layers voted for the parties that most reflected their aspirations.

The masses voted for socialist delegates, ones that seemed to be against both the bourgeoisie and the monarchy, but did not at this stage recognise the differences between the different socialist parties. They did not realise that the majority of the activists that they had cheered on from a distance during the revolution were probably Bolshevik supporters. Instead, as has been explained, they turned to the easier options of the S-R's and Mensheviks whose more well-known leaders warned against the dangers of Bolshevism.

Apart from the political immaturity of the masses, the Bolsheviks were also hampered by the weakness of their organisation, which had been so fiercely attacked by the czarist state during the war years. The fresh Petrograd proletariat were far more likely to come across Menshevik and Social Revolutionary agitators since these parties had more staff, stronger organisations and a greater influence in the intelligentsia and among the junior officers.

All of the parties now coming out of the underground, plus the newly forming trade unions and local soviets, seized vacant buildings left by czarist officials so that their organisational structures soon had a firm basis in each locality.

Another reason for the domination of the Compromisers was that the rules of electoral representation meant that the soldier masses, the freshest and least politically experienced layers, had an overwhelming majority in many soviets.

In Petrograd, despite the fact that the workers outnumbered the soldiers by at least four to one, there were five soldier-delegates to every two from the workers. The workers elected one delegate for every thousand, the soldiers often sent two delegates from every tiny unit. However, the workers accepted and even welcomed this imbalance, again in an effort to ensure that the troops retained their links with the revolution.

On top of this a number of civilians gained entrance to the Petrograd Soviet without election but by individual invitation. These were usually various middle-class radicals, lawyers, students, journalists, who “for a long time crowded out with their authoritative elbows the silent workers and irresolute soldiers” (22). What is more, the soldiers often selected more educated intellectuals and junior officers as their delegates, which, together with special representation often given to the commanding staff, meant that the military delegations in the soviet were far less revolutionary in mood than the rank-and-file soldiers in the barracks.

In the provinces, where victory had been won without any struggle, the soviets were naturally even less revolutionary in character. In early March most towns and industrial centres had built soviets, but the process did not spread to all the villages until April, or even May. So, to start with, the soldiers’ soviets were practically the only voice of the peasantry.

These local soviets looked to the E.C. of the Petrograd Soviet for a lead and it was given an official position of state leadership at the first All-Russian Conference of Soviets on March 29th.

This unrepresentative conference, dominated by the provincial soviets, mainly soldiers’ soviets, declared the existence of the dual power a fiction, with the government and soviets having complete unity of aims. It filled out the Petrograd E.C. with sixteen conservative provincials, giving the leadership a more national, but even more moderate character.

With all these factors taken into account, it is not at all surprising that the Mensheviks and S-R’s dominated the workplace delegations. Even the Vyborg Soviet was initially controlled by the worker-Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks represented an insignificant minority who, in any case, as we shall see later, had no clear idea of what their program should be.

Nevertheless, this did not mean that the masses were totally taken in by the lies and promises of the Soviet E.C. The workers, in particular, regarded the Provisional Government with great distrust, and, as early as March 3rd, meetings of soldiers and workers began to demand that the Soviet take power in its own hands. Again, the Vyborg district took the lead in this agitation.

However, without any clear leadership or political program for taking power these demands foundered against the opposition of the Compromisers. The mood from below instead broke out in a more disguised manner. For example, many regiments resolved to submit only to the directions of the Soviet, not the Government.

Indeed, to the masses it was obvious that the Soviet was the power that they should turn to for a solution to their problems. So much so that, in the words of Sukhanov, making the artificial nature of the dual power crystal clear, “the Soviet apparatus began involuntarily, automatically, against the will of the Soviet, to crowd out the official government machine. It became necessary to reconcile oneself and take up the separate functions of administration, at the same time preserving the fiction that the Mariinsky Palace [HQ of the Provisional Government] was performing them” (23).

What is more, the E.C. then requested a small subsidy for the expenses of carrying out these governmental functions. The Provisional Government refused! The Soviet budget remained, as before, totally dependent on collections from the workers.

As Trotsky points out, even the soviet form of representation was shown to have imperfections, producing a leadership that did not correspond with the aspirations of the masses: “The soviet form does not contain any mystic power. It is by no means free from the faults of every representative system - unavoidable so long as that system is unavoidable. But its strength lies in that it reduces all these faults to a minimum. We may confidently assert - and the events will soon prove it - that any other representative system, atomising the masses, would have expressed their actual will in the revolution incomparably less effectively and with far greater delay. Of all the forms of revolutionary representation, the soviet is the most flexible, immediate and transparent. But still it is only a form. It cannot give more than the masses are capable of putting into it at a given moment. Beyond that, it can only assist the masses in understanding the mistakes they have made and correcting them. In this function of the soviets lay one of the most important guarantees of the development of the revolution” (24).

The exiles shift the E.C. to the right

“In the Menshevik-Social Revolutionary bloc the dominant place belonged to the Mensheviks, in spite of the weight of numbers on the side of the Social Revolutionaries. In this distribution was expressed in a way … the predominance of the city over the rural petty bourgeoisie, and the intellectual superiority of a ‘Marxist’ intelligentsia … which prided itself on the meagreness of the old Russian history” (25).

The president of the Menshevik faction of the Duma, Cheidze, had become almost automatically the President of the Soviet E.C. However, after an initial mood of watchful waiting by the temporary leaders in Petrograd, the return of the exiled leaders to the capital gave the E.C. a more solid, if more right-wing, foundation.

When the Menshevik Tseretelli returned on March 19th, he immediately took over the leadership of both his party and the whole Soviet E.C. “Under the leadership of Tseretelli, the vacillations of the E.C., if they were not put an end to, were at least organised into a system. Tseretelli openly announced that without a firm bourgeois power the revolution will inevitably fail. The democracy must limit itself to bringing pressure on the liberal bourgeoisie, beware of pushing it over by some incautious step into the camp of reaction, and conversely, support it in so far as it backs up the conquests of the revolution” (26).

Supported by other leading Mensheviks like Dan and Skobelev, the Soviet leadership was turned sharply to the right by Tseretelli. All these Mensheviks, previously anti-war 'Zimmerwaldist' socialists [i.e. supporting the conference of anti-war socialists held in Zimmerwald in 1915], now proclaimed that the war should be supported as a struggle in defence of the revolution!

The left-Menshevik, Martov, arriving from abroad only on May 9th, remained in opposition to Tseretelli and Dan but his faction never played any significant part in events. The old Plekhanov had by now become hopelessly right-wing and led a group standing outside the Mensheviks. It had supported the war even before the revolution.

The Narodnik leaders were of little significance, Kerensky being by far the most talented. He decided to formally join the Social-Revolutionary party but continued to act totally independently of it. The various non-party men who had taken an important role in the initial days of the Soviet, like Sukhanov, began to lose influence as the official party leaders began to return from exile.

The Bolsheviks also swung to the right under the influence of the newly arrived Kamenev and Stalin in mid-March, “so that the distance between the Soviet majority and its left opposition had become by the beginning of April even less than it was at the beginning of March. The real differentiation began a little later. It is possible to set the exact date: April 4th, the day after the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd" (27).

Interestingly, a large number of the leading Soviet figures were non-Russians, like the Georgian’s Tseretelli and Cheidze, showing how the oppressed nationalities played a significant part in the revolutionary movement. 

Trotsky concludes, “such was the E.C., the highest organ of the democracy. Two parties which had lost their illusions but preserved their prejudices, with a staff of leaders who were incapable of passing from word to deed, arrived at the head of a revolution called to break the fetters of a century and lay the foundations of a new society. The whole activity of the Compromisers became one long chain of gainful contradictions, exhausting the masses and leading to the convulsions of civil war” (28).

By the middle of April even the Executive Committee had become too broad a body for the leading Compromisers and a right-wing ''bureau'' was set up which, in consultation with the Provisional Government's ruling nucleus, took most important decisions.

The meetings of the full Soviet were regarded as having no practical importance. “The main difficulty for the leaders was not so much to find a general plan, as a current programme of action. The Compromisers had promised the masses to get from the bourgeoisie by way of ‘pressure’, a democratic policy, foreign and domestic. But ‘pressure’ means, in the last analysis, a threat to crowd the ruling class out of the power and occupy its place. At moments of conflict the democracy did not threaten to seize the power, but on the contrary the bourgeoisie frightened them with the idea of giving it back. Thus, the chief lever of pressure was in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This explains how, in spite of its complete impotence, the government succeeded in resisting every somewhat serious undertaking of the Soviet leaders” (29).

However, just as the ‘bureau’ was being formed and the right-wing seemed to have full control of the situation, then, according to one of Kerensky's allies, “exactly at this moment they let slip from their hands the leadership of the masses - the masses moved away from them” (30). 

As Trotsky relates: “These complacent rulers of destiny thought that in entrusting the leadership to them the soviets had essentially completed their task … The masses are long-suffering but they are not clay out of which you can fashion anything you want to. Moreover, in a revolutionary epoch they learn fast. In that lies the power of a revolution ” (31).