The Whip of Counter-Revolution

Trotsky reminds his readers of Marx’s words: “A revolution from time to time needs the whip of counter-revolution” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²]. Kornilov’s revolt had certainly provided such an impetus.

Important questions were now gnawing at the collective consciousness. Why had they been told that a Coalition was necessary to defend the revolution but then one ‘ally’ had turned up on the side of the counter-revolution? Why had Kerensky organised the Moscow Conference and given Kornilov his opportunity to organise? Why was it only the Bolsheviks that had correctly warned about the planned conspiracy? If the military provocateurs had attempted to bring the masses into the streets on August 27th, could they also have been responsible for the bloody encounters on July 4th after all?

Trotsky spells out the conclusion that was now being reached by wide sections of the masses: “The meaning of the baiting of Bolsheviks had become utterly clear: it had been an indispensable element in the preparation for a coup d’etat. The workers and soldiers, as they began to see all this, were seized with a sharp feeling of shame. And out of these moods ... grew an unconquerable loyalty to the party and confidence in its leaders” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

He adds: “The old soldiers … the staff of non-commissioned officers, resisted up to the very last days. They did not want to put a cross against all … their sacrifices.  But when the last prop was knocked out from under them they turned sharply … to the Bolsheviks. Now they had utterly come over to the revolution. They had got fooled on the war, but this time they would carry the thing through to the end” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

As much as the official Government condemned any peasant action, any workers’ strike, in fact any form of resistance to their rule as ‘Bolshevism’, so all those involved began to identify themselves with the party. The influence of Bolshevism grew everywhere. On August 30th a joint session of the E.C. was forced to agree to delegates from Kronstadt being given representation on this leading body. In Helsingfors, a coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries had taken the majority in the soviet. The Regional Soviet Committee, with the young Bolshevik C.C. member, Smilga, as president, had now already effectively established soviet rule in Finland.

Reports flooded in of growing Bolshevik support in areas where they had previously had little backing. For example, in the Moscow Region where members were being beaten up in July and August, even tiny villages were now demanding Bolshevik speakers. In many cities in the region, the Bolsheviks were now entirely dominant while the SRs and Mensheviks were falling to pieces.

Trotsky explains how “the organisations of the party are growing, but its force of attraction is growing incomparably faster. Events are sweeping the masses so powerfully ... that the workers and soldiers have no time to organise themselves in a party. They drink up the Bolshevik slogans just as naturally as they breathe air. That the party is a complicated laboratory in which these slogans have been worked out on the basis of collective experience, is still not clear in their minds. There are over twenty million people represented in the soviets. The party, which had on the very eve of the October revolution, only 240,000 members, was more and more confidently leading these millions, through the medium of the trade unions, the factory and shop committees, and the soviets” (128). [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

Votes in elections of all kinds all showed the astonishing growth in support for the Bolsheviks. The elections to the district dumas of Moscow at the end of September made everyone take notice. The Social Revolutionaries fell to 54,000 votes from the 375,000 it had won in June. The Mensheviks dropped to a mere 16,000 while the Bolshevik poll had risen from 75,000 to 198,000 – 52% of the total.

“ ‘The Bolsheviks worked … unceasingly,’ writes Sukhanov, who … belonged to the shattered …Mensheviks. ‘They were among the masses every day and all the time … guiding both in great things and small the whole life of the factories and barracks. The masses lived and breathed … with the Bolsheviks. They were wholly in the hands of the party of Lenin and Trotsky’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

Sailors’ meetings came out overwhelmingly in support of the Bolsheviks and by September the slogan of ‘Power to the Soviets’ was becoming widely adopted. Developments on the front were more complex. Many regiments had still never heard or seen a real Bolshevik. Bolshevik speakers like Yevgenia Bosch set out, at first cautiously, to speak to the soldiers but met with an enthusiastic response. After Kornilov’s defeat, the officers felt more and more hated and despised while the ranks turned to Bolshevism. Demands for ‘peace’ became insistent.

In contrast, the Compromise parties were disintegrating. The Social Revolutionary Party was not only losing influence but also its social basis. While its more revolutionary members left for the Bolsheviks, petty officials and kulaks began to take their place. The party began to split on class lines with the Left Social Revolutionaries, while not yet formally splitting away, coming closer and closer to Bolshevik demands. The Mensheviks, without a peasant reserve, folded even more rapidly than the SRs. By the end of September, they had practically ceased to exist in Petrograd.

The Soviets after the Kornilov days

The soviets had responded to the danger of the insurrection by developing new forms of organisation. Across the country, the executive committees were pushed aside by special committees of defence, reporting to the soviets but directly organising action themselves. This was no mere copying of Petrograd, it was a common conclusion to the situation reached by almost all soviets.

After the Kornilov days, the soviets raised themselves up to a new level. Quickly, the Petrograd Soviet shifted sharply to the left. On the night of September 1st, it voted by 279 to 115 for a government of workers and peasants,  with the ranks of the Compromisist factions supporting the Bolshevik resolution. The stunned praesidium of Compromisers resigned.

On September 5th, the Moscow Soviet also voted for the first time for the Bolshevik’s policy, condemning the coalition policy of the E.C. On the same day the Bolsheviks were victorious at the central Siberian congress of soviets. On the 8th, a Bolshevik resolution was adopted in the Kyiv workers’ soviet.

Lenin recognised the new situation and again boldly changed policy. Once again, the demand of ‘Power to the Soviets’ could be raised “but received a new meaning: All power to the Bolshevik soviets. In this form the slogan had decisively ceased to be a slogan of peaceful development. The party was launched on the road of an armed insurrection through the soviets and in the name of the soviets” [Volume Two, Chapter Thirteen ¹³].

The Petrograd Soviet met again on September 9th with all factions having called in every available deputy – about 1,000 in all - to try and win a re-vote called by the Right. Trotsky, appearing for the first time since his release from prison (as explained below), was warmly applauded by much of the meeting. Of course, each side was also trying to judge whether Trotsky’s applause was enough to suggest a Bolshevik majority!

It was decided to count the vote by asking all those in favour of accepting the praesidium’s resignation to leave the hall. “All understood that they were deciding the question of power – of the war – of the fate of the revolution. The Bolshevik leaders, on their part, estimated that they would lack about 100 votes. But the workers and soldiers kept on drifting … toward the door. The procedure lasted about an hour. At last the result was counted. For the praesidium and the Coalition, 414 votes; against, 519; abstaining, 67! The new majority applauded like a storm. It had a right to. The victory had been well paid for. A good part of the road lay behind” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

After this defeat, the Compromisers rapidly lost the rest of their support in the Soviet. Their supporters amongst the intellectuals stopped attending, while their leaders stayed holed up in the Executive Committee. Now, as Trotsky puts it, “the Soviet became more homogeneous – greyer, darker, more serious” [Volume Two, Chapter Twelve ¹²].

So had the Bolsheviks made the right assessment at their Congress back in July? Trotsky concludes: “Throughout the resolutions of the Sixth Congress … there runs the assertion that, as a result of the July events, the dual power has been liquidated and been replaced by a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The formula was, to say the least, inaccurate.  From the point of view of the military problems of the moment it was … necessary to overestimate the concentration of power in the hands of the counter-revolution.  But a historical analysis has no need of those exaggerations proper to agitation. The dual power was reconstructed, transformed, but it did not disappear. In the factories it was impossible as before to do anything against the will of the workers; the peasants retained enough power to prevent the landlord from enjoying his property rights; the commanders felt no confidence before the soldiers. But what is the power if it is not the material possibility to dispose of property rights and the military force?  The Executive Committee had lost the lion’s share of its importance. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the bourgeoisie had received all that the Compromise leaders had lost. These leaders had lost not only to the right, but also to the left – not only to the benefit of the military cliques, but also to the benefit of the factory and regimental committees. The dual power had ceased to be ‘peaceful’.  It had become more concealed, more decentralised, more … explosive” [Volume Two, Chapter Thirteen ¹³].

From now on the Petrograd Soviet was led by the Bolsheviks, although without the funds, equipment, newspapers and cars that had previously been granted to it. The Executive Committee had seen fit to steal all that away from them. But they had the confidence of the workers and soldiers – and that proved to be enough.

The Democratic Conference

The Provisional Government had gone to pieces when its Ministers had resigned on the night of August 26^th – ahead of Kornilov’s attempted coup. After its defeat, the bourgeois needed a new coalition to be put back together again. The Compromisers decided that, despite his treachery, they still needed Kerensky to lead it. After a few days of wrangling, it was agreed to settle on a ‘directory’ of five, largely insignificant, others to rule with him.

Kerensky, of course, hoped that he could now simply return to his plan to carry out Kornilov’s programme for himself. But, as Trotsky points out: “There was only one drawback: the victory over the counter-revolution had been far more sweeping than was demanded by the personal plans of Kerensky” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

So, when the directory wanted to release from prison those, like Guchkov, suspected of leading the conspiracy, they were forced to also concede to releasing leading Bolsheviks as well. Trotsky himself was released, officially ‘on bail’, on September 4th. On the same day, Kerensky issued an order to wind up the activities of the ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’ but, under pressure from below, the Compromisers refused to go along with the instruction. Kerensky was having to recognise that the balance of forces had changed.

In addition, during the Kornilov days, Tseretelli had devised a plan for a ‘Democratic Conference’ to be convened. He hoped this could strengthen the Compromisers, giving them a new point of support against both the Bolsheviks and the next Soviet Congress (supposed to be held three months after the last Congress in June, but delayed by the Compromisers who feared defeat at it). It might also help keep Kerensky and the government in check. Of course, the representation was to be weighted away from the soviets and towards the co-operatives and undemocratic zemstvos so as to try and secure the so-called ‘democracy’ a majority.

The Conference opened on September 14th.  It soon became clear the Bolsheviks had, despite the undemocratic nature of its representation, still managed to gather a good level of support. Trotsky spoke to the party’s Declaration, answering the challenges being made that they were preparing to seize power. “ ‘In struggling for the power in order to realise its programme, our party … does not desire to seize the power against the organised will of the majority of the toiling masses of the country.’ That meant: We will take the power as the party of the soviet majority … ‘the organised will of the toiling masses’ referred to the coming Congress of Soviets ” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

Trotsky outlines how the debate in support of a Coalition government clarified the three main tendencies in the Conference: “an extensive but very unstable centre which dare not seize the power, agrees to a coalition, but does not want the Kadets; a weak Right Wing which stands unconditionally for Kerensky and a coalition with the bourgeoisie; a Left Wing, twice as strong, which stands for a government of the soviets or a socialist government” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

A motion in favour of a coalition was narrowly passed but an amendment excluding the treacherous Kadets from the coalition was also carried. But a coalition without the main bourgeois party was pointless. So the Left and Right wings then voted together to defeat the resolution as a whole.

Despite this, Tseretelli put together a resolution calling for the Conference to appoint a smaller, permanent ‘Council of the Republic’ or ‘Pre-Parliament’, but with the inclusion of representatives of the bourgeoisie. This body was to help put together a new coalition with the Kadets, supposedly to represent ‘the nation’ until a Constituent Assembly could be elected. This was eventually agreed, with the Compromisers’ weakness and confusion displayed for all to see.

Should the Bolsheviks boycott?

“What attitude to adopt toward the Council of the Republic immediately became for the Bolsheviks an acute tactical problem. Should they enter or not?  A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

This ‘Pre-Parliament’ had been set up with a membership that bore no relation to the real balance of forces in society. Trotsky argued at the Bolshevik CC that they could not allow the revolution and the broadening power of the soviets to submit to this trickery - and so the Party should boycott the Pre-Parliament. But others like Kamenev strongly disagreed.

With the CC split down the middle, the party took the unusual step of convening a special conference made  up from the Bolshevik delegates to the Democratic Conference, the Petrograd committee, and the CC members themselves. Trotsky and Rykov led for each side of the debate. By 77 to 50, the slogan of boycott was rejected.

This vote reflected the fact that the old divisions within the tops of the Party that had come to the fore in April 1917 had not really gone away. The crux of the matter was, once again, whether the Bolsheviks were going to settle for a bourgeois republic or really set themselves the goal of conquering power.

In April,  Lenin had played a decisive role in winning the debates that had redirected the Party towards socialist revolution. Now, with Lenin in hiding, Trotsky describes how Lenin “was able to take part in this argument only after the event. On the 23rd of September he wrote: ‘We must boycott the Pre-Parliament. We must go out into the soviets … the trade unions, go out in general to the masses. We must summon them to struggle. To drive out the Bonapartist gang of Kerensky with its fake Pre-Parliament. Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo, Comrade Trotsky!’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

While the upper layers of the party were split, the ranks were overwhelmingly in support of Lenin and Trotsky’s slogan. For example, Yevgenia Bosch found herself in a small minority on the Kyiv party committee in supporting the boycott - but won an overwhelming majority at the city conference. “Thus”, Trotsky notes, “the party promptly corrected its leaders” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

The Last Coalition

Even before the Democratic Conference was over, Kerensky had already completed a deal for the Kadets to take up ministerial places in a new Coalition.

By September 25th, the final ministerial line-up was finally confirmed. Ten were ‘socialists’, six from the bourgeoisie, including the rich Moscow industrialist Konovalov who became Vice-President. He had been a member of the first coalition, resigning after the first soviet congress, joining the Kadets in time for the Kornilov insurrection. The British and French were content with the choice of reliable bourgeois representatives as ambassadors to London and Paris.

But this weak government was helpless in the face of the growing tide of protest sweeping the country. One of its first sittings was devoted to quelling the ‘anarchy’ in the villages. The agrarian revolt was reaching new heights with the peasants seizing crops and burning the landlords’ property. Protests were mounting against the sharp food crisis gripping much of the country. Prices were rising, factories closing, workers on strike.

Trotsky describes how “the government, with its inattention to the masses, its light-minded indifference to their needs, its impudent phrase-mongering in answer to protests and cries of despair, was raising up everybody against it” ... “Nobody seriously believed in the success of the new government. Kerensky’s isolation was beyond mending. The ruling classes could not forget his betrayal of Kornilov. The growing force of the opposition paralysed his will. He evaded any decisions whatever, and avoided the Winter Palace where the situation compelled him to act. Almost immediately after the formation of the new government he slipped the presidency to Konovalov, and himself went to headquarters. He came back to Petrograd only to open the Pre-Parliament [but] returned to the front on the 14th. Kerensky was running away from a fate which followed at his heels” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

“Either Kornilov or Lenin”

While the ‘middle ground’ helplessly sought a way forward, Trotsky explains how the serious representatives of the contending classes could see that there was no longer any room for a ‘compromise’ solution to the crisis: “ ‘Either Kornilov or Lenin’: thus Miliukov defined the alternative. Lenin on his part wrote: ‘Either a Soviet government or Kornilovism. There is no middle course.’ To this extent Miliukov and Lenin coincided in their appraisal of the situation – and not accidentally. In contrast to the heroes of the compromise phrase, these two were serious representatives of the basic classes of society” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

The Kadets and Bolsheviks knew that the stage was being set for civil war but both sides still held to the slogan of the Constituent Assembly for now. The bourgeoisie could not yet risk to openly reject it, the Bolsheviks still sought to defend it against the attempts of the bosses to sweep the revolution aside.

Trotsky spells out how the aim of the new Coalition was clear: “to behead the revolution by shattering the Bolsheviks. But here ‘Rabochy Put’, one of the reincarnations of ‘Pravda’, impudently reminded the partners: ‘You have forgotten that the Bolsheviks are now the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.’ This reminder touched a sore point. As Miliukov recognises: ‘The fatal question presented itself: Is it not now too late to declare war on the Bolsheviks?’ ” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].

But, as he adds: “indeed it actually was too late. On the day the new government was formed … the Petrograd Soviet completed the formation of a new Executive Committee, consisting of 13 Bolsheviks, 6 Social Revolutionaries and 3 Mensheviks. The Soviet greeted the governmental coalition with a resolution introduced by its new president, Trotsky. ‘The news of the formation of the government will be met by the whole revolutionary democracy with one answer: Resign! Relying upon this unanimous voice of the authentic democracy, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets will create a genuinely revolutionary government’” [Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen ¹⁴].