"The workers won a political and moral victory [which] ... had an immense significance for the whole future development of the revolution. The workers had gained a few free hours a week for reading, for meetings and also for practice with the rifle"
 |
| Food queues in Petrograd |
Once again, the demand for bread
''The bread-lines had given the last stimulus to the revolution. They also proved the first threat to the new regime'' (32).
In answer to the workers’ demands, the very first session of the Soviet had set up a food commission to investigate the problem of feeding the capital. The commission, consisting largely of Menshevik economists, found themselves compelled by the needs of the situation to recommend extremely radical measures to control speculation and organise the market.
The Soviet therefore voted for resolutions fixing the price of bread, declaring all grain stores public property, for a regulated exchange of goods with the peasants and state control of industry. The E.C. leadership had no alternative proposals so had to support the resolutions and then convey them to the government through the 'Contact Commission’.
The government, of course, ignored the Soviet's wishes. They had no desire to restrict the profiteering of their bourgeois friends nor were they overly concerned with the conditions facing the hungry workers. “All the economic measures of the Soviet went to pieces against the passive resistance of the state apparatus - except in so far as they were carried out independently by local soviets. The sole practical measure carried through by the Petrograd Soviet in the matter of food supply was the limitation of the consumer to a strict ration” (33).
In fact, the rationing was not yet too strict but the measure added to the growing insecurity in the face of continued economic crisis. However, having given up the power, the Soviet had no means of tackling these problems.
The struggle for the 8-hour day
Among the working-class, meanwhile, impatience was growing as to when the new regime would meet the long-standing demand of the Russian labour movement for an eight-hour working day.
Despite their leaders’ demands for a return to work, the proletariat had continued its general strike of the February days. They rightly felt that if they did not succeed in winning this reform now, when the opposition was in crisis, then perhaps they would never succeed.
The Soviet E.C., carrying out their role as the strike-breakers of the revolution, designated March 5th as the date for the return to work. The Menshevik leaders tried to persuade the workers that the political victory of the revolution had been enough. '' ‘For the working class’, they taught, ‘social questions are not now of first importance. Its present task is to achieve political freedom’. But just what this speculative freedom consisted of, the workers could not understand. They wanted in the first place a little freedom for their muscles and nerves'' (34).
The arrogant Soviet leadership “believed that millions of workers and soldiers lifted to the heights of insurrection by the unconquerable pressure of discontent and hope, would after the victory tamely submit to the old conditions of life” (35). However, a movement of this magnitude would only be beaten back by a series of defeats and deceptions.
The workers were not prepared to return to the factories empty-handed and many defied the resolution of the E.C. The Mensheviks, anticipating the 'two-stage' theory of the Stalinists after their counter-revolution, answered that, while in theory the workers would have to fight the capitalists in the future, right now they should settle with a struggle against czarism. Luckily, the proletariat were not to be comforted by such lame excuses.
The workers’ struggle continued. In Petrograd and Moscow there was some return to the factories but the workforce in many plants downed tools after eight hours of work and walked out each day. Bolshevik shop-floor activists were very active in the movement.
By March 10th the Manufacturers Association in Petrograd gave in, announcing it was willing to introduce the eight-hour day and permit the organisation of shop-floor committees. Unlike the Soviet leaders, the employers realised it was necessary to grant a temporary concession in the hope of taking it back again in the future. Of course they resisted the demand for an actual eight-hour law that the disgraced Soviet leaders were forced to call for.
In Moscow, the city Soviet itself was finally forced to introduce the eight-hour day on March 21st. In the provinces the struggle continued into April but eventually most areas won the eight- hour day either in agreement with the employers or by an independent decree of the local soviet.
The government had deliberately stood aside from the negotiations on the working day, leaving it to the Soviet to attempt to pacify the workers. Instead they used the struggle to try and split the unity of the proletariat and soldiers by suggesting through frenzied agitation that the eight-hour day would weaken the war effort.
The campaign had some effect, particularly in Petrograd itself, but the workers answered it successfully by skilfully explaining the reality of the war profits and the terrible conditions in the factories. The soldiers were invited to visit the workplaces to see the industrial battlefront for themselves. By April the campaign was called off by the bourgeoisie.
“Thus after their economic victory, the workers won a political and moral victory [which] ... had an immense significance for the whole future development of the revolution. The workers had gained a few free hours a week for reading, for meetings and also for practice with the rifle, which became a regular routine from the moment of the creation of the workers’ militia. Moreover, after this clear lesson, the workers began to watch the Soviet leadership more closely. The authority of the Mensheviks suffered a serious drop. The Bolsheviks grew stronger in the factories, and partly too in the barracks. The treacherous design of the demagogues turned against its own inspirers. Instead of alienation and hostility, they got a closer welding together of workers and soldiers” (36).
The soldiers make their demands
On March 23rd, the unity of the army and proletariat was visible in the massive funeral procession for the victims of the February revolution. 800,000 people filed past the graves in complete order: workers, soldiers, townspeople, students, ministers, journalists, the solid bourgeoisie, party leaders. The Vyborg section carried 51 red coffins and many of its workers were holding Bolshevik banners.
This peaceful and triumphant procession, where all the various elements of the struggle paraded together, was in many ways a final note of the harmony that the Compromisers thought that they had managed to build.
Indeed, on the very day of the funeral a new development had occurred in the world events that were lying in wait to sabotage the Compromisers’ plans. The USA entered the war, encouraging Miliukov and all the others who hoped to use the slaughter to further their own ends. However, the news alarmed the despairing peasant soldiers who were longing for peace.
It had been no accident that the slogan ‘Down with the War!’ had become one of the chief slogans of the February revolution. The demoralised troops, sick of war and death, longed for this demand above any other - even the demand for land for the peasants. After all, a piece of land was of little use to a dead soldier. Moreover, the days of revolution had awakened the hopes and personality of the peasant army and shown the troops that they did have a way of imposing their own wishes on events. Now, like the workers in the cities, the soldiers were expecting and waiting for the revolution to answer their demands - and bring peace.
The immediate effect of the revolution in the army had in fact been to slow the pre-revolutionary flood of desertions. The soldiers were prepared to wait at their posts - not by any means to go on the offensive but to defend the revolution against attack and to give the new government a stronger position from which to negotiate peace. They were not, however, prepared to see the hated czarist regime in the army continue unaltered.
“ In the minds of the soldiers the insurrection against the monarchy was primarily an insurrection against the commanding staff ” (37). It was this hatred of their commanders that had produced the indestructible ‘Order No.1,’ which resisted all attempts by the Soviet E.C. to reintroduce the troops’ subordination to their former superiors.
The frightened generals had tried to hide this revolutionary order from the front and indeed: “ In many trenches, perhaps even the majority, the news of the revolution came from the Germans before it got there from Petrograd. Could there have been any doubt among the soldiers that the whole command was in a conspiracy to conceal the truth? “ (38).
Yet once the truth was out, many of the officers tried to save their skins by pinning on red ribbons. Many even registered as Social Revolutionaries. Of course, they were prepared to switch their allegiances but not to change their beliefs. In the words of General Denikin: “I accept the revolution wholly and irrevocably. But to revolutionise the army... I consider ruinous to the country” (39).
The generals were happy for the revolution to do what it liked, as long as it kept its hands off them! Since the commanders belonged to the privileged classes they had a lot to lose - not only their officer privileges but also their landed property.
Through experience the soldiers began to realise that it was only their own actions that were going to make any changes to the army regime. “ ‘But when the soldiers saw’, to quote a delegate from the front, ‘that everything remained as before - the same oppression, slavery, ignorance, the same insults - an agitation began’ '' (40).
The tension between the officers and the soldiers grew greater. In some places, particularly in the navy, bloody retributions had already taken place and the most hated officers were being pushed out, arrested or even assaulted. Gradually the army began to break apart.
As in every army, the divisions in the Russian forces were simply a concentrated picture of the splits in society. At bottom, the antagonism between soldier and officer was the hostility between peasant and landlord. In between a layer of petty-bourgeois officers and clerks attempted to square the circle by urging some general reform but still standing for war to total victory.
Their counterparts in the Soviet E.C. also tried to make the impossible request of the enemy to voluntarily stop attacking Russia! Under the pressures of the realities of imperialism, the Compromisers had, of course, to make a firm choice between peace and war. Naturally, after a brief hesitation, the petty-bourgeois leaders ran to the side of the bourgeoisie and declared support for the war - in the guise of ‘defence of the revolution’.
The E.C.’s manifesto of March 14th was unanimously supported by the Soviet with even the Bolsheviks, much to Lenin's consternation, offering no resistance to this false document in favour of imperialist slaughter. The bourgeois Miliukov rightly declared that: “The manifesto, although it began with so typical a note of pacifism, developed an ideology essentially common to us and all our allies” (41).
The Soviet leadership, if in words talking about a desire for a democratic peace without annexations or indemnities, were simply again playing the treacherous role of convincing the revolutionary masses to support the policy of the bourgeoisie.
Using the war to halt the revolution
On the surface, the bourgeoisie were apparently taking an aggressively patriotic stance in favour of the war. In reality, perhaps only some of the newly converted warmongers amongst the Compromisers genuinely believed the war could be won.
One letter from the commanders to the Kadet Nabokov was typical of the reports reaching the government and its advisers: “You must clearly understand that the war is finished, that we can't and won't fight any longer. Intelligent people ought to be thinking up a way to liquidate the war painlessly, otherwise there will be a catastrophe” (42).
As Trotsky relates: “The mutiny of the battalions of the Guard foretold to the possessing classes not victory abroad but defeat at home. The unexpected revolutionary optimism of Miliukov - declaring the revolution a step towards victory - was in reality the last resort of desperation ... [The bourgeoisie] felt that they would not be able to use the revolution for the purposes of war, and so much the more imperative became their other task: to use the war against the revolution” (43).
The bourgeoisie, although still worried about the effect of an ‘Allied’ victory on lowly Russia’s international economic position, now gave up thinking about negotiating a separate peace with Germany. “The concern of the moment was not to secure advantageous international conditions for Russia, but to save the bourgeois regime itself, even at the price of Russia’s further enfeeblement'' (44).
“To keep up the war hypnosis and the mood of chauvinism was the only possible way the bourgeoisie could maintain their hold upon the masses - especially upon the army. The problem was to sell to the people an old war which had been inherited from czarism, with all its former aims and allies, as a new war in defence of the conquests and hopes of the revolution. A prolongation of the war would justify them in preserving the old military bureaucratic apparatus, postponing the Constituent Assembly, subordinating the revolutionary country to the front. All domestic questions, especially the agrarian, and all social questions, were to be postponed until the end of the war. A war to exhaust the enemy was thus converted into a war to exhaust the revolution. This was not perhaps a completed plan ... but ... it flowed inevitably from the whole ... situation” (45).
Just to confirm that Miliukov was only being loyal to his class interests, and not to the Allies, he quickly offered his services to the Germans immediately after the October revolution.
In the meantime, with the help of the Soviet etc., Miliukov's scheming seemed to be having some success. Indeed, when on April 1st, General Alexeiev was officially placed at the head of the armed forces, “the inspirer of the czarist foreign policy, Miliukov, was Minister of Foreign Affairs; the leader of the army under the czar, Alexeiev, had become commander-in-chief of the revolution. The succession was fully re-established'' (46).
The army looks to the soviets
Despite the flood of pro-war propaganda, the ordinary soldier still longed for peace. Miliukov was hoping for a strong German attack to convince the workers and soldiers of the need to fight ‘to defend the revolution’. Unfortunately for the bourgeoisie, the front was generally quiet throughout the spring.
The soldiers left waiting and discussing in the mud grew tired of the lack of progress towards peace. Desertions began to increase again as hope turned to disappointment. Late in March one of the generals reported that: “The fighting spirit has declined. Not only is there no desire among the soldiers to take the offensive, but even a simple stubbornness on the defensive has decreased to a degree threatening the success of the war. Politics, which has spread through all the layers of the army, has made the whole military mass desire only one thing - to end the war and go home” (47).
In fact, this ‘politics’ was simply the revolution awakening the consciousness of the soldier mass since there was no organised party opposing the war at the front. The weak voice of the Bolsheviks in the army had become even quieter after the layer of revolutionary workers that had been sent to the front as punishment was allowed to return home. Nevertheless, the army gradually came over to support the Soviet leadership rather than the supposed commanders.
The Soviet E.C. began to have more and more organisational control over the army through its influence on the soldier delegates in the Soviet and on the elected regimental committees set up by ‘Order No. 1’.
The soldiers were only too happy to use these committees to remove a good number of their former commanding staff from their posts. In addition, the Soviet sent commissars into the regiments to watch over the military chiefs, helping them win their battle with the bourgeoisie for control. However, it was in many ways a pyrrhic victory since the more the soldiers listened to the E.C., the more they became convinced of the bankruptcy of the Soviet leadership.
A congress of trench delegates in early April helped to reveal the real state of affairs: ''Fraternisation was going on along the whole front ... the commanding staff could not even think of repressive measures. Faced by this passionate audience [the liberals] gave up the idea of opposing their own resolutions to those of the Soviet. The battle was won by the democrats without a struggle. The Soviet resolution on the war was adopted by 610 votes against 8, with 46 abstaining. The last hope of the liberals, that of opposing the front to the rear, the army to the Soviet, went up in smoke. But the democratic leaders returned from the congress more frightened than inspired by their victory. They had seen the ghosts raised by the revolution and they felt unable to cope with them” (48).
No comments:
Post a Comment