'The Month of the Great Slander'

As mentioned in the previous lesson, rumours first started to be circulated around the Tauride Palace that there was ‘proof’ that Lenin was a German ‘agent’ late on July 4^th. On the 5^th, a small right-wing newspaper first reported the documents purporting to reveal that Lenin was receiving directions and money from the German Government. By July 6th, the whole press was full of the news.

Of course, Lenin was the leader of a revolutionary party who had lived for decades in a struggle against the ruling-class of every country, not least German militarism. To those that knew anything about Lenin, the idea that he could be in the pay of a foreign power was simply ridiculous. But for the masses who had only begun to hear of Bolshevism in the last few months, it was easier to believe.

The idea of financial backing was particularly absurd given the Bolsheviks’ constant shortage of cash. In the war years up to the February Revolution, the Bolsheviks had only been able to distribute a total of 300,000 leaflets in Petrograd, owing to lack of finance. After February, the swift growth in both membership and workers’ donations to the party had helped considerably. Nevertheless, Pravda was still the smallest of the party papers.

“In spite of the Spartan regime of economy instituted by Lenin, the party was always in need. In order to send papers to the front, it became necessary again and again to take up special collections among the workers. And even so, the Bolshevik papers arrived in the trenches in incomparably fewer numbers than the papers of the Compromisers and liberals. In April a city conference of the party appealed to the workers of Petrograd to collect ... the 75,000 roubles lacking for the purchase of a printing plant. The sum was more than covered, and the party finally acquired its own press - the same one which the junkers shattered to the ground in July” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

Of course, the slanderers were always able to point to Lenin’s journey through Germany as proof of his friendship with the German Government.  But, as Trotsky pointed out: “An agent would have travelled through the hostile territory concealed and without the slightest danger. Only a revolutionist confident of himself to the last degree would have dared openly to transgress the laws of patriotism in wartime” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

That’s not to say that the German military staff hadn’t calculated that Lenin’s return might help weaken the resolve of the Russian army, but, as Trotsky points out, the October and subsequent German revolutions prove that they miscalculated in working out the final result! “Of the two strategists, Ludendorff who permitted Lenin to go, and Lenin who accepted his permission, Lenin saw farther and better” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

The ‘revelations’ had first been passed from officials of the Intelligence Service to War Minister Kerensky on May 16th. This notoriously reactionary organisation had never been slow to take on whatever dirty business was required of them. But the accusations were so fantastic that Ministers put them to one side for a month and a half. However, the attorney general described how, on July 4th, “when it became clear that the Provisional Government in Petrograd was wholly without reliable armed forces, it was decided in the district headquarters to try to create a psychological change in the regiments by means of some strong medicine. The substance of the documents was communicated to representatives of the Preobrazhensky regiment nearest to headquarters; those present observed what an overwhelming impression the communication made. From that moment it was clear what a powerful weapon was in the hands of the government” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

The counter-revolution lost no time in making good use of its new weapon. Prince Lvov was quite clear which war he was really interested in winning: “Our deep breach on the Lenin front ... has incomparably more importance for Russia in my firm opinion than the breach made by the Germans on the south-western front” [Volume Two, Chapter Three ³].).

Kerensky must have known the accusations were preposterous but now pronounced the revelations as ‘extraordinarily serious’. Even if the Menshevik leaders did not openly back the slanders, they certainly did nothing to stop the attacks either.

As early as July 5th, Lenin could see that, given the chance, this accelerating campaign of filth and lies might not stop until the Bolshevik leaders were silenced for good – by imprisonment or even death. He and Zinoviev went into hiding in a workers’ home just in time.

Kerensky had returned from the front on July 6^th, fresh with the reactionary ideas of the generals in his ears. His demand for decisive action against the Bolsheviks quickly led to the government resolving to bring to trial all the leaders of the so-called ‘armed insurrection’ and also to disband the regiments that had taken part in the mutiny.

Lenin and Zinoviev made arrangements so that the Inquiry Commission set up by the Soviet E.C. could meet them at a safe address but no commissioners came to meet them. “The officers and junkers ... were now beating up and arresting in the streets everyone who protested against the charge of espionage against the Bolsheviks. Lenin therefore finally decided to go into hiding - not from the investigation, but from possible attempts upon his life” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

The two leaders spent a few weeks hiding in a forest outside the capital, sleeping in a haystack. Lenin then left to a safe house in Finland. He returned secretly to Petrograd in September, only reappearing in public for the first time on the day of the October insurrection.

Of course, while doing nothing to protect Lenin, the E.C. took every opportunity to condemn him for supposedly refusing to take part in the investigation. The left of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, and even some Bolsheviks, also questioned why Lenin had chosen to leave Petrograd.

Lenin could see only too well what ‘justice’ in the hands of the reaction would be like in the atmosphere following the ‘July Days’. As Trotsky points out, the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in January 1919, at an equivalent stage of the German revolution, show what may have befallen Lenin if he had not fled.

On 21st July an indictment on a charge of state treason was published against Lenin, Zinoviev and others, including Kollontai. It accused the Bolshevik leaders of working, with the aid of foreign governments, to encourage the Russian troops to refuse to fight as well as organising an armed insurrection in Petrograd from the 3rd to 5th of July.

The same charges were used to indict Trotsky and Lunacharsky when they were arrested and imprisoned on July 23rd. (This was a show of strength from the newly-formed government of Kerensky, a development described below.) To make the charges stick, Trotsky was even accused of having travelled through Germany to Russia, even though his route from New York via Stockholm was common knowledge!

These accusations would normally have been too obviously unbelievable to use, but in the embittered atmosphere following war, defeat, ruin and revolution, the ruling classes needed a scapegoat. The accusation of links with Germany had long been used by them to undermine enemies of all shades. Trotsky explains how: “the unbroken chains of suspicions of Germanophilism and espionage, extending from the czarina, Rasputin and the court circles, through the ministry, the staffs, the Duma, the liberal newspapers, to Kerensky, and a number of the Soviet leaders, strikes one most of all by its monotony. The July slander against the Bolsheviks ... was the natural fruit of panic and hate, the last link in a shameful chain, the transfer of a stereotyped slanderous formula to its new and final object, permitting a reconciliation of the accusers and accused of yesterday. ... Was it in actual fact possible for the possessing classes to surrender their place to the Bolsheviks without having made a last desperate effort to trample them in the blood and filth?  The revelations ... from the Intelligence Service were only a materialisation of the ravings of possessing classes who found themselves in a blind alley. For that reason the slander acquired such frightful force” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

“The history of all revolutions and civil wars invariably testifies that a threatened or overthrown ruling class is disposed to find the cause of its misfortunes, not in itself, but in foreign agents. Under these theories ... there lies an indirect historical foundation. Consciously or unconsciously, every nation at the critical period of its existence makes especially broad and bold borrowings from the treasury of other peoples. The new ideas and institutions thus appear to the conservative strata first of all as alien, as foreign inventions. The village against the city, the backwoods against the capital, the petty bourgeois against the worker - they all defend themselves under the guise of a national force resisting foreign influence” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

“When it comes to a threat against their material interests, the educated classes set in motion all the prejudices and confusion which humanity is dragging in its wagon-train behind it. The slander of those years of war and revolution was striking, we remarked, in its monotony. However, it does contain a variation. From the piling up of quantity we get a new quality. The struggle of the other parties amongst themselves was almost like a family spat in comparison with their common baiting of the Bolsheviks ... In the assault on the Bolsheviks all the ruling forces, the government, the courts, the Intelligence Service, the staffs, the officialdom, the municipalities, the parties of the soviet majority, their press, their orators, constituted one colossal unit. The slanders poured down like Niagara. July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history” [Volume Two, Chapter Four ⁴].

The new government

After the ‘July Days’, the shifting equilibrium between the different forces in Russian society tilted temporarily towards the right.

The E.C. voted to give the Government ‘unlimited powers’ to help its work as ‘a government of the Salvation of the Revolution’. In other words, they agreed to its independence from the soviets.

Repression continued against the Bolsheviks with their press totally shut down. A series of regiments were disbanded and sent in small detachments to the front (although the reaction apparently failed to consider the effect these men would have once they began agitation amongst the soldiers in the trenches!).

Raskolnikov and other Kronstadt leaders were arrested as well as both Bolshevik and left Social Revolutionary activists in the Baltic fleet base at Helsingfors [Helsinki]. The Cossacks killed in the July Days were given a heroes’ funeral, while the workers and soldiers shot by them had to be buried in secret.

But while the workers and soldiers drew back to prepare afresh, it was the Compromisers that were becoming most isolated. In truth, their influence had already begun to weaken well before. The Bolsheviks had been loosening its former grip over the workers and soldiers. On the other side, with the preparation for the offensive, the Kadets, industrial and finance capitalists and military commanders had all begun to exert more influence, not to mention the British Ambassador Buchanan and the other Allied diplomats.

The Kadets would have liked to seize the moment after the July Days to wipe out the Bolsheviks for good, but, as the Compromisers realised, they would not have stopped there. The Kadets wanted to sweep them away as well. Therefore, the Soviet leaders had to tread a careful path, “between the necessity of reviving their half-friendship with the bourgeoisie, and the need of softening the hostility of the masses” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

These contradictory pressures meant that, at the same time as they pursued further repressive measures, the Compromise Ministers - for now still in the absence of the Kadets, whose resignations had triggered the ‘July Days’- also proposed the government carry out the programme of the June congress of Soviets. This was too much for the land-owning Prince Lvov, and so Kerensky was made Minister-President in his place.

Trotsky comments: “The plebeian transformation of the government was at hand. Kerensky, Tseretelli, Chernov, Skobelev, leaders of the Executive Committee, now determined the physiognomy of the government. Was not this a realisation of the slogan of the June Days, ‘Down with the ten minister-capitalists’? No, this was only an exposure of its inadequacy. The minister-democrats took the power only in order to bring back the minister-capitalists” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

Kerensky was no great leader - in fact, he was the very opposite, a conceited petty bourgeois lawyer without any clear ideas. But it was this formlessness that made him perfectly suited to the job of President at this time. The counter-revolution was prepared to put up with him - while they prepared to put a real ‘strong man’ in his place.

The bourgeoisie knew, in just the same way that the Bolsheviks had understood in July, that, as things stood, they would not be able to hold on to power if they tried to seize it from Kerensky and the Soviets. The balance of forces was still too even, the pressure of the masses still too great.

The dual power between the Soviet Compromisers and the bourgeoisie and military was still present but, without a Coalition Government, the antagonisms came more into the open. Out of the blue, the Provisional Committee of the state Duma adopted a dramatic resolution against the ‘Government of Salvation’. In response, all the ministers resigned, handing in their portfolios to Kerensky.

But, while both sides feared each other, they all feared the masses far more. They needed each other’s support against the revolution. So these resignations were really a way to ensure negotiations were reopened with the Kadets and industrialists to try and pull a Coalition back together. However, feeling their renewed strength, the Kadets decided that they would strike a hard bargain: “The Kadets laid down their conditions: responsibility of the members of the government ‘exclusively to their own conscience’; complete unity with the Allies; restoration of discipline in the army; no social reforms until the Constituent Assembly. A point not written down was the demand that the elections to the Constituent Assembly be postponed” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

The E.C.’s response was to further attack the gains of the revolution. A fierce law was passed outlawing industrial action on the railways. Tseretelli sent out instructions to prevent land seizures - or, as Trotsky put it: “The Government of the Salvation of the Revolution recommended itself above all as a government of the salvation of the landlords’ property” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

So, having demonstrated their worth to the bourgeoisie, Kerensky signalled that they could accept the Kadets’ demands. But the Kadets, in league with the generals, industrialists and Allied diplomats, instead broke off negotiations. They wanted to make the Compromisers squirm a little bit more!

The latest news about the deteriorating situation at the front was used to further frighten the E.C. More pressure was applied when General Kornilov gave orders to open fire on any retreating soldiers on the south-western front, then under his command. This soon appeared in the press, Kornilov never being slow to seek press publicity.

The Generals also demanded abolition of the soldiers’ committees so they could restore ‘discipline’ again. They made sure Kerensky himself felt their wrath at the Soviet’s decision to pass the famous ‘Order No. 1’ after the February Revolution. Under pressure, Kerensky agreed to make Kornilov commander-in-chief of the whole army. Kornilov accepted under condition that the death penalty be restored in the military.

“The Compromisers were surrendering all along the lines. In spite of the formal split, negotiations were in full swing behind the scenes. Kerensky, in obvious agreement with the Kadets, resorted to a purely histrionic measure - he resigned and left town. Miliukov says on this theme: ‘By his demonstrative departure he proved to his enemies, rivals and adherents that, however they might look upon his personal qualities, he was indispensable at the present moment because of the political position he occupied between the two warring camps’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

Finally, on July 24th, not without some opposition, the E.C. agreed to give unconditional and unlimited powers to Kerensky to form a new government of his choosing. At the same time, despite some impatient voices demanding the overthrow of Kerensky, Miliukov ensured the Kadet Congress agreed as well.

Trotsky points out “this does not mean that Miliukov had any illusions about Kerensky, but he saw in him a point of application for the power of the possessing classes. Once having freed the government from the soviets, it would be no labour to free it from Kerensky” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

Kerensky’s new government consisted of second and third-rate figures. But this was not the only difference between this and the previous coalition. “In the first coalition, formed on May 6, the socialists had been in the minority, but they were in fact masters of the situation. In the ministry of July 24, the socialists were in a majority, but they were mere shadows of the liberals” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

Trotsky explains how Tseretelli stayed out of the government, but only to free himself to act as the chief agent of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet. He lectured the Petrograd workers that if the Coalition acted against the ‘interests of the country’, then “ ‘our duty would be to withdraw our comrades from the government’. It was no longer a question then … of crowding out the liberals after using them up; it was a question of retiring in good season after finding out that you had been used up. Tseretelli was preparing a complete surrender of power to the bourgeoisie” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

The reaction was now on the offensive. The new Bolshevik paper ‘Worker and Soldier’ was suppressed. Soldiers’ committees were being arrested en masse. Agents of the reactionary monarchist Black Hundreds were freed from prison, while Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Kollontai and others remained behind bars.

Congresses of all those who had previously been fearful to organise now took place with confidence - landlords, merchants, industrialists, clergy, Cossacks, the Cavaliers of St. George - with the Kadet Party pulling the strings. Meanwhile, army congresses were forbidden and the Bolshevik congress at the end of July could only be held semi-legally (as discussed in Lesson 24).

At a Congress of Trade and Industry held early in August the textile king Riabushinsky threatened that: “The bony hand of hunger and national destitution will seize by the throat the friends of the people!” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵]. This was a clear directive to institute a policy of lockouts to attack the revolution.

Pressure was also brought to bear to postpone the Constituent Assembly planned for September, indeed, preferably for the reaction, to put it off until after the end of the war. Pointing to the attempted counter-revolutionary coup soon to come, discussed in Lesson 25, Trotsky explains: “A compromise was found. The convocation of the Constituent Assembly was deferred to the 28th of November. The Kadets accepted this postponement, although not without grumblings. They were firmly counting on certain decisive events happening during the three remaining months, which would shift  the whole question of the Constituent Assembly to a different level. These hopes were more and more openly connected with the name of Kornilov” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

Kerensky, Kornilov and ‘Bonapartism’

The name of Kornilov was appearing with increasing regularity in the right-wing press as the future saviour of the country. Leading industrialists, Kadets and other generals were all giving him their support.

Kornilov was noted for his personal bravery but also for his complete lack of strategic ability – a “man with a lion’s heart and the brain of a sheep” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶] as a fellow general described him. More to the point, an E.C. report back in March had summed him up as “a general of the old stripe who wants to put an end to the revolution” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶]. His political ignorance made him easy prey for seekers of adventure – and those looking for a figurehead for the counter-revolution.

The Kadet Party also tried to push for a reform of the church to help them win support from the people against the revolution. However, Trotsky notes, in comparison to the rise of capitalism in England for example, “the preparations for the Council of Churches were met with complete indifference by the people. The interests and passions of the masses were finding their expression in socialist slogans, not theological texts. Belated Russia enacted her history in an abridged edition: she found herself obliged to step over, not only the epoch of the reformation, but that of bourgeois parliamentarism as well” [Volume Two, Chapter Five ⁵].

The dual power between the Compromisers and the bourgeoisie signified a social crisis, a nation utterly divided. Each side recognised the need for a strong government based on an individual balancing above all classes – in Marxist terms, a ‘Bonapartist’ regime.

The Compromisers’ candidate for Bonaparte was Kerensky but the bourgeoisie looked to Kornilov. Not surprisingly, the two men hated each other – “a translation of the contradictions of the dual power into  the explosive language of personal ambition” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶].

Of course, while appearing to be above all classes, a Bonapartist regime exists, in the final analysis, to protect one social system. Napoleon protected the bourgeois revolution and its property, rent and profits. However, he had been able to successfully build his position with the support of a victorious army that had given land to the peasants.

But Trotsky notes that “the misfortune of the Russian candidates for Bonaparte [was] they were confronted by a great revolution which had not yet solved its problems or exhausted its force. The bourgeoisie was trying to compel the peasant, still without land, to fight for the estates of the landlords. The war had given nothing but defeats. There was not the shadow of an industrial boom. If the proletariat had retreated it was only to close up its ranks. The peasantry were only drawing back for their last assault upon the lords. The oppressed nationalities were assuming the offensive against a Russifying despotism. In search of peace, the army was coming closer and closer to the workers and their party. There was no equilibrium. The revolution was still full-blooded. No wonder Bonapartism proved anaemic” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶].

In reality, Kerensky was no powerful Bonaparte in control of events. He took his orders from Miliukov – and ambassador Buchanan. Kerensky refused to take action against the threat of reaction while his government repressed the workers and soldiers. Trotsky observes: “that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defence of the existing order they will not stop at the most ruthless acts” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶].

The bourgeois strategists realised what a useful asset Kerensky was to them. He was able to give a revolutionary colour to their counter-revolutionary policies. “ ‘Imagine how it would have been,’ remarked Lenin, ‘if Guchkov had attempted to issue orders for an offensive, to disband regiments, to forbid congresses. But Kerensky could permit himself this ‘luxury’ – only, it is true, until he had squandered that incredibly quick-melting confidence which the people had placed to his credit …’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶].

By August, however, a growing number of the possessing classes were losing patience at the failure of the Kadets to overthrow Kerensky. It was the mirror image of the workers’ and soldiers’ impatience with the Bolsheviks in the ‘July Days’.

“Just as out of the eagerness of the Petrograd masses arose the semi-insurrection of July, so out of the impatience of the property owners arose the Kornilov insurrection of August. And just as the Bolsheviks found themselves obliged to take the side of an armed insurrection, in order if possible to guarantee its success, and in any case to prevent its extermination, so the Kadets found themselves, for like purposes, obliged to take part in the Kornilov insurrection” [Volume Two, Chapter Six ⁶].