CHAPTER 15 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1917: PLANNING THE REVOLUTION With Lenin trying to pull the Bolsheviks to the left and other Bolsheviks pulling to the right, Stalin was determined as the Congress of Soviets approached to tie the Party firmly to the concept of revolution through the Soviets. The day after the Central Committee rejected Lenin s call for an armed uprising, Stalin affirmed his own concept of the revolution: the revolutionary committees and Soviets will have the last word, he predicted. The following day, September 17, he pointedly titled the Rabochy Put editorial, All Power to the Soviets! This was the slogan of the new movement. Arguing that the characteristic feature of the present moment was a struggle between these two powers, namely the power of Kerensky and his government, and the power of the Soviets and the Committees, Stalin concluded that A time has come when evasion is no longer possible. 1 Impatient with the Democratic Conference, Stalin was forecasting a revolution through the Soviets in the near future. Stalin also encouraged forming a united revolutionary front with other socialists who broke with the Kerensky regime. In Rabochy Put on September 16 he argued that the line of compromise with the bourgeoisie was opposed by a second line favoring a radical break and advocated by our Party and the internationalists in the Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties. This second line is an expression of no confidence in the government, he said, and [it] calls for the transfer of power to the direct representatives of the workers, peasants and soldiers Soviets. 2 In the same forum three days later, praising the Socialist Revolutionary-controlled Soviet of Tashkent for having taken over power and dismissed the old officials, Stalin declared, We are prepared to support the Tashkent Soviet and we shall fight in the same ranks as the revolutionary Socialist Revolutionaries. With them we shall have a united front. He promised Bolshevik cooperation with all groups that would break with the Kerensky government [and]
2 support the Soviets in their struggle for power. Support the struggle against the counter-revolution resolutely and unreservedly. Do this, he said, and unity will be achieved as a matter of course, easily and simply, as was the case during the Kornilov revolt. 3 Though Stalin doubtless did not expect many members of the majority socialist parties to respond to his appeal, even at this late date he was holding the door open as he had since March for those socialists who would join the fight against the bourgeois regime. The reasons for Stalin s lukewarm attitude toward an armed revolt by the Bolsheviks and for his insistence that power be taken through the Soviets are, unavoidably, matters for speculation, for he never stated them publicly. It seems likely, however, that he had little or no confidence in the ability of the Bolsheviks to stage a successful insurrection. Leadership was lacking. Lenin had shown himself in June and July to be unreliable in moments of crisis. The chieftains of the Military Organization and other radical elements within the Party had not been able to plan the armed seizure of power they talked about, and this failure was not corrected after Lenin pointed it out to them. But even if the Bolsheviks had had the capacity to seize power independently, it is possible that Stalin would have counseled against it. Independent action would have jeopardized support for the Party among the soldiers and even among the workers, for both groups were devoted to the Soviets, which they saw as their institutions, the sources of revolutionary and democratic legitimacy, above any party. With popular expectations focused on the upcoming Congress of Soviets, any Bolshevik armed action prior to the Congress likely would be regarded as an attempt to pre-empt the Congress and thus would play into the hands of Kerensky and the defencist socialists. In addition, unilateral Bolshevik action would have destroyed all hope of cooperation with other left socialists, leaving the Bolsheviks to face the tasks of running the country alone. Where Lenin continued to follow his instinctive approach of splitting off those with whom he disagreed, Stalin s inclination remained to try to rally different socialists together around commonly
3 held principles and interests. Ending the war (or, if need be, fighting a revolutionary war with a ruin of an army), rescuing Russia s collapsing economy, and overseeing land reform and other social transformations would be enormously difficult tasks, and Stalin seems to have recognized the wisdom of facing them in alliance with other socialists rather than alone. Committed to the Soviets and desiring a united revolutionary front, Stalin stood apart from Lenin on the central issue of how to take power. According to the Central Committee s sketchy minutes, the editorial direction of Rabochy Put, for which Stalin was chiefly responsible, drew criticism from some comrades who were dissatisfied with the central organ s tone and with certain expressions in its articles. But on September 20 the Committee (absent Stalin) decided that the paper s general direction wholly coincides with the CC line. It seems likely that this endorsement extended beyond Stalin s championing of the Soviets to his efforts to encourage broader unity among socialists. Upon learning on September 6 that the Menshevik-Internationalist Yuri Larin had joined the Bolsheviks, the Central Committee assigned him responsible tasks concerned with municipal affairs, and it renewed its confidence in him on September 20. 4 This suggests that the Central Committee majority, like Stalin, sought the cooperation of other left socialists. One important defender of Rabochy Put likely was Leon Trotsky, named a member of the Central Committee at the Sixth Party Congress (in absentia) after he and his followers were absorbed into the Party. Released from prison early in September, Trotsky quickly emerged as a key leader and promptly took up the banner of the Soviets. Together with Stalin, he opposed participation in the Democratic Conference and called instead for the transfer of all power to the Soviets. 5 After the Bolsheviks achieved control of the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky who had presided over the capital s Soviet in the 1905 revolution once again led the body. Addressing the Soviet on September 25, its new President assured that, despite the inevitable conflicts between parties, we will conduct the business of the Petrograd Soviet in a spirit of the rights and full freedom of all factions,
4 and the hand of the Presidium will never suppress the minority. 6 Though he stopped short of calling for the united revolutionary front that Stalin desired, his collegial attitude toward the formerly dominant socialist parties was a practical gesture that encouraged better relations. Stalin doubtless had been annoyed, even threatened, by Lenin s courtship of Trotsky earlier in 1917 and he likely resented Trotsky s meteoric emergence as a Bolshevik leader, but the evidence from September and October 1917 reveals no trace of hostility on his part toward Trotsky. Egos and previous conflicts aside, the central fact was that Trotsky and Stalin were singing from the same sheet of music. Instead of being governed by jealousy and resentment, Stalin evidently looked on Trotsky as an ally in the fight for the revolution as Stalin conceived it and against Bolsheviks who wavered to the right or the left. An indication of Stalin s acceptance of Trotsky is provided by a tribute he offered to Trotsky in Pravda on the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Though in 1918 Stalin had an ulterior motive for flattering Trotsky (a circumstance that casts some doubt on the sincerity of his words), the straightforward and measured character of the tribute suggests that it was not disingenuous. Stalin bluntly wrote, All the work of the practical organization of the uprising transpired thanks to the leadership of the President of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky. One can confidently state, he continued, that the quick transfer of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the skillful and decisive work of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Party was due primarily and mainly to comrade Trotsky. 7 This is a businesslike appreciation, not effusive or fawning, and Stalin restricts Trotsky s contributions to the technical realm, not the political. Whatever Stalin s purpose in 1918, the tribute testifies to an appreciation of Trotsky s role in October. Not surprisingly, though, this passage did not appear in subsequent publications of Stalin s article. One of Trotsky s least noted contributions was to present the Central Committee s report on the current situation at an important conference on September 24 of the
5 Bolshevik Central Committee, the Petersburg Committee, and the members of the Party s delegation to the Pre-Parliament. 8 By entrusting Trotsky with this task the Central Committee probably was counting on his oratorical powers to carry the day. From this conference emerged a blueprint for making the revolution, a blueprint very much in line with Trotsky s and Stalin s thinking. The conference specified that the proletarian party must make every effort to mobilize the broad masses of the people, organized by the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies, which are now militant class organizations, and the slogan of the day becomes the transfer of power to them. The Party must direct its work along these lines With these ends in view, there must be a drive to develop the activity of the Soviets and to raise their political significance to the role of organs standing counter to the bourgeois state authorities (the government, the Pre-Parliament, etc.). The necessary conditions for this are: close links between local Soviets and contact to be established with other revolutionary organizations belonging to the proletariat, the soldiers and the peasants; a change in the Soviets organizational apparatus ; the calling of regional congresses immediately and a congress of Soviets very soon. Only if the broad masses, organized in the Soviets, rally all their forces can the workers, soldiers and peasants come out victorious. Only if they are victorious can a democratic peace be achieved and the cause of international revolution be moved rapidly forward. 9 Later the same day, the Central Committee took steps to implement this policy by providing for a stronger Bolshevik contingent in the leadership of the Petrograd Soviet and by deciding to campaign widely everywhere and pass resolutions in different Soviets demanding that a congress be called immediately. 10 This historic resolution makes unmistakably clear the Central Committee s design to take power through the medium of the Soviets, particularly through the forthcoming Congress of Soviets. Two days later, on September 26, Lenin s Tasks of the Revolution, written about three weeks previous, appeared in Rabochy Put, giving the false impression that Lenin endorsed the new call for all power to the Soviets; responsibility for this doubtless rested with Stalin. The deception may have convinced Lenin that he could not trust or work with the Central Committee, and it possibly provoked him to take more direct and aggressive action to achieve the insurrection he sought. In any event, disdain for the Central
6 Committee and a determination to act suffuse a letter Lenin wrote on September 27 to I. T. Smilga, who chaired the Regional Committee of Soldiers, Sailors and Workers in Finland. This was the same Smilga who had submitted his resignation from the Central Committee (together with Stalin) to protest Lenin s canceling the June 10 demonstration. Lenin told Smilga that Kerensky was obviously preparing to use troops to put down the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks, though they had declared war on the government, were not conducting regular work to prepare their own military forces for the overthrow of Kerensky. Events, Lenin continued, have fully proved the correctness of the proposal I made at the time of the Democratic Conference, namely, that the Party must put the armed uprising on the order of the day. Events compel us to do this. History has made the military question now the fundamental political question. I am afraid that the Bolsheviks forget this, being busy with day-to-day events, petty current questions, and hoping that the wave will sweep Kerensky away. 11 Such hope is naïve; it is the same as relying on chance, and it may prove criminal on the part of the party of the revolutionary proletariat. The Central Committee having quashed his attempt to raise the issue of an insurrection, Lenin argued that it was time to agitate inside the Party for an earnest attitude toward the armed uprising. To this end he urged Smilga to copy the letter to the Petrograd and Moscow comrades. More important, he directed him to Create a secret committee of absolutely trustworthy military men which would organize a military take-over in Petrograd with troops from Finland. Lenin also proposed that in order to prepare people s minds properly we must immediately advance the slogan, transfer power now to the Petrograd Soviet which will transfer it to the Congress of Soviets. If we fail to seize power immediately, he forecast, we may turn out to be consummate idiots, the owners of beautiful resolutions and of Soviets, but no power! Lenin insisted on preparing a revolt earnestly, not relying on the boastful general phrases all too common with us. 12 For the leader-in-hiding, the Central Committee had become an obstacle, and he would go around it.
7 Two days later, in a diatribe addressed to the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee, the Moscow Committee, and the Soviets, Lenin made clearer still his views on insurrection and his contempt for the Central Committee. If the Bolsheviks either announced a date for an insurrection or waited for the Second Congress of Soviets to decide on taking power, Lenin argued that the Cossacks would be mobilized [by Kerensky] for the day of the insurrection so foolishly appointed. First defeat Kerensky, Lenin counseled, then call the Congress. He held out the assurance that The Bolsheviks are now guaranteed the success of the insurrection because they could launch a three-pronged surprise attack (from Moscow, the Baltic Fleet, and from the thousands of armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd ), because we have a majority in the country, because the disorganization of the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries is complete, and because we have slogans that guarantee us support down with the government that is suppressing the revolt of the peasants against the landowners! But against him, Lenin said, is a tendency, or an opinion, in our Central Committee and among the leaders of our Party which favors waiting for the Congress of Soviets, and is opposed to taking power immediately, is opposed to an immediate insurrection. This tendency, or opinion, must be overcome. Otherwise, the Bolsheviks will cover themselves with eternal shame and destroy themselves as a party. For to miss such a moment and to wait for the Congress of Soviets would be utter idiocy, or sheer treachery. For good measure, Lenin repeated the charges of idiocy and treachery several times, concluding that To refrain from taking power now is to doom the revolution to failure. Then Lenin dropped a bombshell. Citing the Central Committee s refusal to respond to the persistent demands I have been making and the censorship of his articles, Lenin declared that I am compelled to regard this as a subtle hint at the unwillingness of the Central Committee even to consider this question, a subtle hint that I should keep my mouth shut, as a proposal for me to retire. I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee, which I hereby do, reserving for myself freedom to campaign among the rank and file of the Party and at the Party Congress.
8 For it is my profound conviction that if we wait for the Congress of Soviets and let the present moment pass, we shall ruin the revolution. 13 Lenin s resignation proved to be an empty gesture, but his promise to campaign within the Party against the Central Committee line proved genuine. 14 In the next several days Lenin fired off no less than six more salvoes intended to win converts to his cause. Charging his opponents with being in the grip of a fear of the struggle for power, 15 Lenin continued his frantic calls for insurrection. As he flailed about for support, he sometimes contradicted himself. Together with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries the Bolsheviks had an obvious majority in the country, he wrote on October 1, but a week later he saw no need to bother attracting them. 16 Evidently he had largely given up hope of the uprising beginning in Petrograd, for he argued that the insurrection should begin in Moscow or elsewhere and be brought to Petrograd. 17 The revolution, Lenin claimed, was always in imminent danger of being ruined, but he saw the danger differently on different days: further delay would destroy the Bolsheviks credibility with the people, Kerensky would crush the revolution with troops, or he would destroy it by surrendering Petrograd to the Germans. But on another day Lenin claimed that Kerensky was powerless to do anything against the revolution. 18 Despite such discrepancies, the main thrust of Lenin s position became clearer. The Bolsheviks must resort to insurrection at once, he insisted, and waiting for the Second Congress of Soviets would be a childish game a disgraceful game and a betrayal of the revolution. Nonetheless, All Power to the Soviets should be the Bolshevik slogan; it was, he said, nothing but a call for insurrection. The Soviets were useful in reality only as [organs] of insurrection, he claimed; otherwise they are a meaningless plaything. Lenin s goal was to create a purely Bolshevik government, to take over full state power alone, using the Soviets as the apparatus for smashing the old bourgeois state machinery. Then the Bolsheviks would address the perfectly soluble problem of taking immediate steps toward socialism. Ignoring his own failure to lead the
9 revolutionary people in June and again in July, Lenin warned that the blame will be wholly and undoubtedly ours if we, who for months have been calling upon the people to revolt and repudiate compromise, fail to lead them to revolt on the eve of the revolution s collapse, after the people have expressed their confidence in us. 19 Lenin s impassioned pleas found a receptive audience among radicals in Moscow and Petrograd, but to little effect. On October 3, G. I. Lomov, representing Bolsheviks in the Moscow area, reported to the Central Committee that the mood in the region is extremely tense because we are marking time while the masses are putting forward the demand for concrete measures. The Central Committee listened without discussing his report. 20 Two days later, when Lenin s partisans in the Petersburg Committee raised the call for insurrection, leading Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet and the Military Organization argued forcefully against premature action. Lenin overestimated Bolshevik appeal throughout the country, they said, and he underestimated the difficulties posed by Russia s disastrous military and economic situation. Others, including spokesmen for the Central Committee, argued the need to act through the Congress of Soviets. Badly split on Lenin s proposals, the Petersburg Committee finally decided to postpone a decision until a citywide conference could be held two days hence. But this conference, evidently swayed by reports that the masses were still not enthusiastic about an armed uprising, took no action. 21 Lenin s campaign was stalling, but his militancy was contributing to potentially harmful divisions in the Party. Beside disagreeing about Lenin s ideas, Party organizations were beginning to quarrel over issues of authority. The Petersburg Committee, upon learning that the Central Committee had rejected Lenin s call for insurrection and thereby violated a pledge to consult the local committee before making major decisions, protested the Central Committee s high-handed action. 22 But after the Petersburg Committee postponed a decision on Lenin s pleas, its Executive Commission,
10 ignoring both the action of its parent committee and the agreement it had just accused the Central Committee of violating, unilaterally initiated preparations for armed action against the Provisional Government. 23 Party unity was becoming increasingly strained as the prospect of victory grew nearer. It was perhaps in response to this intra-party tension that the Central Committee, on October 3, invited Lenin to move nearer to Petrograd so that close and constant contact could be established. 24 Possibly it thought it could control Lenin were he nearer to hand. Two days later, responding to complaints from the Bolshevik left, the Central Committee decided to meet on October 10 with representatives of the Petersburg and Moscow Party Committees. It was Stalin who suggested this conference. 25 But no sooner had the Central Committee taken these steps toward meeting the challenge from the left than a renewed challenge from the right emerged, on October 7, when members of the Bolshevik delegation to the Pre-Parliament tried to reverse the decision to walk out of the assembly at its opening session. Trotsky managed to eke out a narrow victory over those who wanted to remain in the Pre-Parliament. Then, after making a speech denouncing the assembly and calling for transferring all power to the Soviets, he led the walkout. Predictably, Rabinowitch notes, Trotsky s inflammatory declaration and the Bolsheviks demonstrative walkout triggered suspicions that the Bolsheviks were planning a coup. 26 It was thus to an unsettled capital and an unsettled Party that Lenin returned, probably on October 8 or 9, 27 in time to attend the Party conference that Stalin had proposed for the tenth. Perhaps for security reasons, however, attendance was restricted to members of the Central Committee. They met late in the evening at the apartment of the Left Menshevik Sukhanov, whose Bolshevik wife (Galina Flakserman) had arranged his absence for the night. After scolding the Central Committee for showing indifference to the question of insurrection and thereby losing considerable time, Lenin insisted that the question is urgent and the decisive moment is near. The masses are fed up with words and resolutions, the majority is now behind us, and Politically, the situation is
11 completely ripe for a transfer of power. It is senseless to wait for the Constituent Assembly, Lenin warned, and he proposed that the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, which was to open the next day in Petrograd, be used as the starting point for decisive action. 28 According to recollections by Trotsky in 1924, Lenin also rebuked those who connected the uprising with the Second Congress of Soviets and argued that it was imperative that the rising should break out sooner and independently of the Congress. First the Party must seize power, arms in hand, and then we could talk about the Congress. We should pass over to action immediately. 29 Commenting later on Lenin s position, Trotsky expressed the view that the party could not seize power by itself, independently of the Soviet and behind its back. This would have been a mistake, the consequences of which would have affected the attitude of the workers and might have had harmful repercussions within the Petersburg garrison. The soldiers knew their delegates in the Soviet; it was through the Soviet that they knew the party. If the uprising had taken place behind the back of the Soviet, independent of it, without its authority and not openly for all to see as a further step in the struggle for power, there might have been a dangerous confusion among the troops. Besides, one should not forget that in Petersburg, side by side with the local Soviet, there still existed the old All- Russian Central Executive Committee at the head of which stood the SRs and the Mensheviks. Only the Congress of Soviets could be set against the Committee. Presumably Trotsky presented this criticism of Lenin s ideas at the meeting, but the minutes of the meeting record objections only by M. Uritsky, who claimed that we are not only weak technically [that is, in making military preparations] but also in all other aspects of our work. Uritsky pointed to disorganization in the Petrograd Soviet, the weakness of the armed workers guard, and the unreliability of the garrison troops as particular problems. Alas, the minutes tell us little more about the discussions that raged most of the night. They are wholly silent about the main debates, which, Trotsky recalled, were, of course, devoted to the struggle against the faction which opposed armed uprising altogether. But the exchanges were so intense that by the end of the meeting, Trotsky remembered, Every one of us felt like a patient after a surgical operation. 30
12 Fortunately for our understanding of the meeting, the chief opponents of the armed uprising, Zinoviev and Kamenev, wrote out the next day a short summary of the speeches we gave at the session. Their chief argument was that Lenin greatly overestimated the strength of the revolutionary forces. A militant mood does not even exist in the factories and barracks, they said, and to calculate on it would be to deceive ourselves. They also challenged Lenin s firm assurances of support from Russia s army and from the international proletariat. There was no guarantee of victory over Germany, they warned, and if the Bolsheviks took power alone Russia s soldiers, wanting peace, would not support a revolutionary war against all international capitalism in alliance. Zinoviev and Kamenev also pointed out that there was very little evidence to support Lenin s claim that socialist revolution was at hand in Europe. Thus to seize power now, they said, would jeopardize the fate of the Russian and the international revolution. The alternative they offered was to confine ourselves now to a defensive position, allowing the Provisional Government to sputter ineffectually while sympathy for our Party continues to grow throughout the country. The ongoing growth of the Party s influence would ensure convocation of the Constituent Assembly, they claimed, and Bolsheviks would have at least a third of the votes there. The Socialist Revolutionaries would also have strong representation, but the intensification of need and hunger and the peasant movement would force them to seek an alliance with the proletarian party. The leftward leaning Constituent Assembly would be obliged, in turn, to work with the Soviets, and this would give our Party s policy a tremendous chance of a real victory. 31 Lenin s policy, Zinoviev and Kamenev warned, was a fatal policy. In the end the Central Committee approved a resolution offered by Lenin which put an armed uprising on the order of the day. Recognizing that an armed uprising is inevitable and that its time has come, the Central Committee suggests that all Party organizations be guided by this and approach the discussion and solution of all practical issues from this point of view (the Congress of Northern Regional Soviets, the withdrawal
13 of troops from Peter[sburg], the action of our people in Moscow and Minsk, etc). The vote was 10 for the resolution, 2 against. A Political Bureau to provide political leadership in the days ahead was created. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and two others were named members. 32 Trotsky recalled that a decision was also taken that the uprising was to take place not later than October 15. There was hardly any discussion about selecting a date, Trotsky said, perhaps because Everybody understood that this was an approximate date, a point in time, which could be advanced or delayed, but only for a matter of days. But the need for a deadline, and a close one at that, was absolutely clear. 33 Lenin might have won, but what had he won? The man who had been railing about the Central Committee only passing resolutions instead of taking action 34 had achieved the passage of yet another resolution. And it was a resolution without teeth. Instead of a firm commitment to prepare immediately for an uprising in the nearest future, there was only a vague acknowledgment that insurrection was on the order of the day. Instead of marching orders to local Party organizations, there was only a suggestion that they discuss the situation. Instead of tying an uprising to the Congress of Northern Regional Soviets, as Lenin wanted, there was only a hazy suggestion of a date (if Trotsky is correct). The new Political Bureau which was to provide leadership included a majority opposed to Lenin s course: Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were against any uprising, and Trotsky and Stalin, who favored taking power through the Congress of Soviets. The composition of the group, as Ulam has pointed out, revealed the still hesitant and temporizing attitude of the majority of the Central Committee. 35 Could Lenin afford many more victories like this? In recalling the October 10 Central Committee meeting, Trotsky pointed out that, After all, in the Central Committee itself there existed three distinct factions: first those who opposed the seizure of power and whose logic of the situation led them to reject the slogan all power to the Soviets ;
14 second, Lenin, who demanded the immediate organization of the uprising, independently of the Soviets; and third, those who considered it imperative to link the uprising closely with the Second Congress of the Soviets so that even the date of the two should coincide. 36 With this analysis in mind, the resolution of October 10 clearly was a defeat for the faction of Zinoviev and Kamenev. From Lenin s standpoint, though, the resolution was at best a limited victory. He did not receive approval of the immediate action he had been demanding; at most, he had won additional time to struggle against the faction of Trotsky and Stalin. But it was action that Lenin wanted, not time: in the previous weeks he had been complaining about time slipping away. 37 The resolution also was not a clear-cut victory for the Trotsky-Stalin group: their central concern to link the uprising with the Second Congress of Soviets was not sanctioned. But the vagueness of the endorsement of insurrection and the resolution s temporizing nature conformed generally to the aims of Trotsky and Stalin, suggesting that they were the chief winners. Though the resolution employed much of Lenin s verbiage, its chief importance was to postpone a final decision in the debate between Lenin and the Central Committee majority. 38 What Stalin said or whether he said anything at the October 10 Central Committee meeting is not known. Three days later, however, in an unsigned Rabochy Put editorial entitled Soviet Power, he displayed confidence about the revolution s course. At last the time has come, he said, to put the slogan All Power to the Soviets! into practice. Soviet Power was not just a popular slogan, explained Stalin, but the only sure weapon in the struggle for the victory of the revolution, the only way out from the present situation. It would be wrong to think that Soviet Power simply meant replacing old government ministers with new, socialist ones. It meant making the new, revolutionary classes the masters of the country. To accomplish this goal in fact, it would be necessary to purge thoroughly all government departments and institutions, to expel the Kornilovites from all of them, and to place loyal members of the working class and the peasantry everywhere. Arguing that every department is a fortress in which
15 bureaucrats who are ready to sabotage every revolutionary measure were still entrenched, Stalin declared, Power to the Soviets implies a thorough purge of every government institution in the rear and at the front, from top to bottom. Every government official, every chief must be elected and subject to recall. Only thus could the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary peasantry become a reality, and unlike bourgeois dictatorships it would be an open, mass dictatorship, exercised in the sight of all, without plots and underhanded dealings. 39 Clearly, Stalin was eager to get on with the revolution, and evidently he had left the October 10 meeting in an upbeat mood. He also evidently thought of the revolution as a profoundly democratic transformation. This expectation would prove wrong. From October 11 through October 15, there is a gap in Lenin s writings, 40 but he was not inactive in promoting his agenda. He left his hiding place to meet with Bolshevik radicals from Moscow, while his partisans argued his case with the Petersburg Bolshevik City Conference and especially at the Congress of Northern Regional Soviets. These efforts failed. The Petersburg City Conference opposed an immediate seizure of power, and at the Congress of Northern Regional Soviets representatives of garrison troops, the Bolshevik Military Organization, Petrograd Bolsheviks, and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, all balked. The Congress concluded on October 13 by calling for the immediate transfer of power to Soviets throughout Russia and for decisive action by them, but urging that the Second Congress of Soviets not be disrupted. 41 Instead of Lenin getting the insurrection he wanted, the Central Committee majority had scored another victory. For Lenin, worried about time slipping away, the Congress of Northern Regional Soviets represented a waste of three days. 42 And time continued to slip away. Moscow Bolsheviks, meeting on October 14, came out in favor of an armed revolt, but they failed to take any steps to prepare for military action. At a meeting of the Petersburg Committee the
16 next day, a plea by Lenin supporter A. S. Bubnov for immediate action foundered in a sea of doubt, counter-arguments and hesitation. 43 Time was a problem also for the advocates of taking power through the Second Congress of Soviets. The approach of the Congress heightened expectations and Lenin s calls for action raised them higher still, creating the danger as Lenin had warned that workers and soldiers would lose faith in the Party. The task for the Central Committee was to maintain the masses confidence that decisive action would be forthcoming very soon while not encouraging unrealistic expectations for immediate action. Articles by Stalin on October 13 and 15 walked this tightrope. The time had come to put the slogan into practice and for the revolutionary classes to take power, but it was not time for action just yet: what is required of us now, he cautioned, is the utmost vigilance and the fullest readiness for battle. He did promise his readers, however, that when the decisive hour strikes [the government s supporters] will all be called to account by the revolution which they are seeking to betray, but which they will not succeed in hoodwinking. We do not doubt, he concluded, that the Soviets will find proper means of stigmatizing the contemptible blacklegs of the revolution and their organizations. 44 Though Stalin refrained from calling for immediate action, he was promising decisive action in the near future by the Soviets against the Provisional Government. On the evening of October 16 with the presumed date for the insurrection having flown by the Central Committee met again, augmented by representatives of local Party units, workers organizations, and the Petrograd Soviet. Reviewing the resolution adopted on October 10, Lenin argued there was a clear need for a very determined and active policy, which can only be an armed insurrection. Some participants reported that workers would support action by the Bolsheviks, while others countered that the masses would support the Soviets but not unilateral action by the Bolshevik Party. Still others warned that the mood of the masses was growing indifferent to the Bolsheviks and
17 inclining more toward the Anarchists. Argument versus counter-argument, back and forth seesawed the discussion. 45 Finally, a sensible comment by A. A. Yoffe offered a way to resolve the conflict. The October 10 resolution, he said cannot be understood as an order to rise: it is a rejection of the tactics of refraining from action and a recognition that insurrection is a possibility and a duty on the first suitable occasion. In this sense, it is to be welcomed. But it is not true, on the other hand, that it is now a purely technical matter; even now the moment for insurrection must be considered from a political point of view. The spirit of the resolution is to use the first suitable occasion to seize power and that is why it should be welcomed. 46 A leading critic of Lenin s position, V. V. Schmidt, reacted to Yoffe s insight by saying that The matter is becoming clearer now, and there is no reason to object to preparations for a revolution. 47 Lenin, too, shifted his ground after Yoffe spoke. Realizing that Yoffe had pointed out a viable way to proceed, Lenin announced that If all resolutions were defeated in this manner, one could not wish for anything better. He then proposed that the resolution [of October 10] be confirmed, that preparations get positively under way and that it should be for the CC and the Soviet to decide when. 48 After Kamenev noted that this interpretation of the resolution is a retreat because earlier it was said that the rising must be before the 20 th and now it is a question of steering toward a revolution, Lenin formally proposed: The meeting unreservedly welcomes and entirely supports the CC resolution [of October 10], calls on all organizations and all workers and soldiers to make comprehensive and intensive preparations for an armed insurrection and to support the Center created for this by the Central Committee and expresses full confidence that the CC and the Soviet will be timely in indicating the favorable moment and the appropriate methods of attack. 49 By a vote of 20-2, with 3 abstentions, Lenin s motion was approved. Lenin had won passage of an important resolution directing the Party to prepare for armed action. But again the lion s share of the victory belonged to Trotsky, Stalin and
18 the Central Committee majority. According to the new resolution, the timing and the tactics of the insurrection would be determined not by Lenin but by the CC and the Soviet. This embodied the line Stalin and Trotsky had been urging. 50 Of Lenin s earlier demand for an immediate revolt independent of the Soviets not a trace remained. Perhaps Lenin had come to realize that the best he could hope for was to encourage prompt action by the pro-soviet majority. 51 After the meeting the Central Committee established the Center mentioned in the new resolution. Stalin was one of the five members of this Military Revolutionary Center, 52 which was the third leadership group set up by the Central Committee within nine days. The abortive Political Bureau of October 10 had been the second. Earlier, on October 7, the Central Committee had created an Information Bureau for the struggle against counter-revolution. Trotsky later claimed that the purpose of this body was to plan for a revolt. He also said that Stalin had been invited to join Trotsky and Sverdlov as members but declined because doubts about whether workers and soldiers would support a revolt made him skeptical about the whole enterprise. 53 In any event, there is no evidence that the Information Bureau or the Political Bureau or the Military Revolutionary Center ever functioned. 54 Obviously, then, none of these bodies provided leadership or direction for the seizure of power. It may be that the Central Committee s creation of the last two of these bodies, and perhaps of all three, was primarily intended to encourage Lenin to think that aggressive preparations were underway when in fact this was not the case. Stalin made several remarks at the October 16 meeting that cast light on his position in the multi-sided debate. He was firmly opposed to the position of Kamenev and Zinoviev. Waiting for the Constituent Assembly would allow the counter-revolution the opportunity to organize itself, Stalin said, and by following Zinoviev and Kamenev we will retreat endlessly and lose the whole revolution. This sounds very much like Lenin s criticism of their thinking. Stalin also presented an analysis of international relations
19 which he thought shows that there ought to be more faith. There are two lines here, as he saw it: one steers for the victory of the revolution and relies on Europe, the second has no faith in the revolution and reckons on being only an opposition. Here, too, Stalin was criticizing Zinoviev and Kamenev, the exponents of the latter line, in this instance for lacking faith. Stalin s most significant remarks at the October 16 meeting illuminate the tactic of the Central Committee majority. Discussing the original resolution, Stalin asserted that The Petrograd Soviet has already taken its stand on the road to insurrection by refusing to sanction the withdrawal of troops. He added that the navy, by going against Kerensky, also has already rebelled. Acknowledging that the insurrection was already under way, Stalin anticipated Yoffe by saying that that the only way to understand the resolution of October 10 was as providing an opportunity to choose the right day for the rising. He proposed no date, but he was not in favor of waiting too long. How long is one to wait if there is no military attack? he wondered, pointing out that the overall behavior of the government already constitutes an attack. 55 Trotsky was absent from the Central Committee meeting, but he later indicated that N. V. Krylenko had represented his views. Krylenko had no doubt that the water is boiling hard enough, according to Trotsky s summary, which continued: To take back the resolution in favor of insurrection would be the greatest possible mistake. He [Krylenko] disagreed with Lenin, however, on the question who shall begin it and how shall it begin? To set the date of the insurrection definitely now is still inexpedient. But the question of the removal of the troops is just that fighting issue upon which the struggle is taking place. The attack upon us is thus already a fact, and this we can make use of. It is not necessary to worry about who shall begin, for the thing is already begun. Trotsky clearly approved of Krylenko s statement, pointing out that It was along this road that the insurrection continued to develop. He also noted that Lenin did not respond to Krylenko s comments. 56
20 Krylenko s remarks, approved by Trotsky as an expression of his own views, and Stalin s statement are virtually identical in substance, indicating an essential unity of views between the two Central Committee members. They both believed that the insurrection was already under way by the 16th, and that it had begun when the Petrograd Soviet had blocked an attempt by the Provisional Government to remove troops from Petrograd. The two men shared a common understanding of how the insurrection would proceed. As Stalin summed it up in 1924, the revolution s attack was carried out under the slogan of protecting Petrograd from possible attack carried out under the slogan of organizing Soviet control over the Headquarters of the Military District under the slogan of protecting the Petrograd Soviet from possible action by the counter-revolution. The revolution, as it were, masked its actions in attack under the cloak of defense in order more easily to draw the irresolute, vacillating elements into its orbit. This, no doubt, explains the outwardly defensive character of the speeches, articles and slogans of that period, the inner content of which, nonetheless, was of a profoundly attacking nature. 57 This retrospective account is consistent with Stalin s statements at the October 16 meeting, a circumstance indicating its credibility. Its affirmation of the goal of drawing the irresolute, vacillating elements to the revolution matches Stalin s claim in 1920 that the Central Committee was concerned not to spoil matters and damage relations with [soldiers at] the front. 58 A similar concern not to alienate petty bourgeois elements that supported the revolution had figured prominently in Stalin s thinking in April. The struggle among Bolshevik leaders about how the revolution should come to power had been won by Stalin, Trotsky, and the Central Committee majority. Lenin had lost. His demands for unilateral and aggressive action by the Bolsheviks had been rejected as politically unsound. Because of the attachment of the masses to the soviets, the Central Committee majority believed that the taking of power had to be accomplished through the soviets or to appear to be in defense of them. According to this tactic, the Petrograd Soviet and other Bolshevik-influenced groups would engage in behavior which would challenge the authority of the Provisional Government and provoke it into openly repressive actions which, in turn, would justify an armed insurrection against the regime.
21 The Bolsheviks would come to power, then, not as insurrectionists seizing power for themselves but as defenders of the revolution against the counter-revolutionary government. It was a shrewd and sound political tactic, and it recalled Stalin s caution in March that the Bolsheviks let the Provisional Government undermine itself and then seize upon the opportunities that were created. 1 SW, 3:320-22. 2 SW, 3:316-17. 3 SW, 3:323-27. See also an article of October 4 (SW, 3: 360). 4 Bone, 51, 65. 5 See, for example, Rabinowitch, Power, 182-87; James D. White, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. A Short History (London, 1994),152; Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed. Trotsky: 1879-1921 (New York, 1954), 282ff. 6 Quoted in Pomper, 302. 7 Pravda, November 6, 1918. 8 Bone, 66. 9 Bone, 73 (emphases added by me). 10 Bone, 72-73. 11 In disparaging Bolshevik hopes for a wave [to] sweep Kerensky away, Lenin likely was alluding to Stalin s signed article of September 9 entitled The Second Wave (SW, 3:301-07). Lenin s reference was apt, but Stalin surely would resent Lenin s mocking him. 12 LCW, 26:69-72 (Lenin s emphases). 13 LCW, 26:82-84 (Lenin s emphases). 14 Trotsky, History, 3:136, recalls that Lenin saw to it that copies [of his letter] fell into the hands of the more reliable party workers in the district locals. 15 LCW, 26:143. 16 LCW, 26:140, 187 (Lenin s emphases). 17 LCW, 26:141, 146, 180-81, 187. 18 LCW, 26:141, 146, 184-86.
22 19 See especially, LCW, 26:90-95, 101-3, 138-44, 179-87 (all emphases in quotations are Lenin s). 20 Bone, 76. Trotsky, History, 3:145-46, claims that Lenin was behind Lomov s action. 21 See Rabinowitch, Power, 196-201; Daniels, Red October, 66-67. 22 Rabinowitch, Power, 195-96. 23 Ibid., 200. 24 Bone, 76. 25 Bone, 78. 26 Rabinowitch, Power, 201-2; Daniels, Red October, 68-70. 27 The generally accepted date of Lenin s return to Petrograd is October 7 (see, for example, LCW, 26:582), but in an article written on October 8 Lenin said that he had little hope that [his manuscript] will reach Petrograd comrades by the 9 th (LCW, 26:179). This statement suggests that when Lenin wrote on October 8 he had not yet arrived in Petrograd. 28 His remarks as recorded in the minutes of the meeting are at Bone, 86-87, and, in a slightly different translation, LCW, 26: 188-89. 29 Leon Trotsky, Lenin. Notes for a Biographer (New York, 1971), 91-92. This edition of Trotsky s O Lenine of 1924 is to be preferred to the 1925 English translation, which is unreliable. 30 Trotsky, Lenin, 92-94; Bone, 87-88. 31 Bone, 89-95 (emphases in the original). 32 Bone, 88-89, or LCW, 26:190. 33 Trotsky, Lenin, 93. 34 LCW, 26:69, also 144 and 184. 35 Ulam, Stalin, 152. 36 Trotsky, Lenin, 93. 37 For example, LCW, 26:69. 38 Rabinowitch, Power, 206-7, notes that the meeting did not resolve the split within the Central Committee. Van Ree, Stalin s Bolshevism, 46, notes that as a decision for an uprising the resolution was hollow. 39 SW, 3:392-96.
23 40 Noted by Daniels, Red October, 78. 41 Ibid., 84; Rabinowitch, Power, 209-13. At the Congress another important difference between Lenin s camp and the Central Committee majority came into the open. After one of Lenin s chief surrogates, M. M. Lashevich, condemned all other parties, Trotsky took pains to draw a distinction between the revolutionary left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries and that party s defencist mainstream. Where Lenin s followers, favoring a solely Bolshevik regime, branded all non-bolsheviks as non-revolutionary, Trotsky stood with Stalin in desiring cooperation with other socialists who opposed the war and the Provisional Government. See F. F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 (London, 1982), 262. 42 However, the Congress served Trotsky s position well. See James White, Lenin, Trotskii and the Arts of Insurrection: The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, 11-13 October 1917, Slavonic and East European Review 77 (1999), 1:117-39. 43 Daniels, Red October, 90-91; Rabinowitch, Power, 216-19. 44 SW, 3:392-406. 45 See the extensive minutes of the meeting at Bone, 96-110. 46 Ibid., 106-7. 47 Ibid., 107. 48 Ibid. (Emphasis added.) 49 Ibid., 108-9. 50 Van Ree, Stalin s Bolshevism, 47, thinks that the resolution suggests that Trotsky s approach of attuning the take-over to the Congress of Soviets was adopted. I do not go so far. 51 Even the endorsement of an armed insurrection was not a clear victory for Lenin. According to Podvoisky, Bolsheviks understood the term in two ways: as a task requiring immediate execution and in a more general sense of taking power. Insurrection in the first sense was postponed, he recalled, though insurrection in the second sense was already underway on October 16. See N. Podvoisky, Krasnaia Gvardiia v oktiabr skie dni (Moscow, 1927), 9, 13. 52 Bone, 109. Sverdlov, Bubnov, Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky were the other members. Van Ree, Stalin s Bolshevism, 47, argues that a provision that the Military Revolutionary Center was to be included in the Soviet Revolutionary Committee constitutes proof of Lenin s acceptance of Trotskii s tactics. Perhaps, but Lenin subsequently showed no loyalty to the Military Revolutionary Committee or to Trotsky s tactics. 53 Bone, 81; Trotsky, Stalin, 228; Slusser, 235. 54 Slusser, 225-33.