The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries

The previous lesson explained how the 'Compromisers' in the Soviet leadership – the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries - went to great efforts to conceal the real nature of the revolutionary struggle. But how did they manage to do this for so long? Were the workers and peasants just easily duped?

Marxists never blame the supposed ‘lack of understanding’ of the masses but seek to explain their outlook in the changes of mass consciousness that are taking place. Firstly, the characteristics of the two ‘Compromise’ 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, employed Marxist phraseology but used it to argue for the inevitability of bourgeois development in Russia.

The Social Revolutionaries (SRs) on the other hand, had their roots in the peasantry. The SR leaders spoke out against Marxism, adopting confused Narodnik ideas [see Lesson Three] that reflected the contradictory pressures facing the Russian peasant at that time. After February, the SRs 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 SRs. This also gave the SRs a dominant influence in the city soviets, thanks to the support of the soldiers’ delegates.

In reality, Trotsky explains that 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” [Chapter Twelve of the ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ²² ]

The masses took the line of least resistance, in this case the SRs. 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 SRs was far more closely linked with the liberal bourgeoisie than with the revolutionary masses. After the revolution, this radical upper layer present in the SRs 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! As Trotsky comments,“… 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” [Chapter Nine ¹⁶ ]

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, as previously discussed, 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 mass of the working-class is first willing to give to the leadership of its traditional organisations. In addition, as raised previously, the elected soviet delegates rarely reflected the aspirations of the revolutionary activists that had actually led the February struggles on the streets of Petrograd. Once that 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.

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, they turned to the easier options of the SRs 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 Tsarist state during the war years. All of the parties now coming out of the underground, plus the newly forming trade unions and local soviets, seized vacant buildings left by Tsarist officials so that their organisational structures soon had a firm basis in each locality. However, the Petrograd workers and soldiers 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.

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. 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.

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.” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

In the provinces, where victory had been won without any struggle, the soviets were naturally even less revolutionary in character. By 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 29^th. 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.

Even soviets have imperfections

With all these factors taken into account, it is not at all surprising that the Mensheviks and SRs dominated the workplace delegations. 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 3^rd, 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 – including, as we shall see, from the Bolshevik leadership - 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” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]

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” [Chapter Twelve ²² ]