Beyond the Mensheviks’ confession of their own political ineptness, this thesis has little to commend it: collective action of workers profoundly shaped the politics of 1917. Indeed, the aggressive measures of factory owners and the government’s inability to mediate or satisfy minimal demands contributed to the steady radicalization of the workers. The result, as S. A. Smith has shown, was the growing importance of organizations such as factory committees, as a powerful force for ‘democratization’ demanding workers’ control and self-management and as hotbeds of Bolshevik activism. These organizations enabled Bolsheviks to offer an alternative to the trade unions and to outflank their Menshevik rivals. Nor can any serious account of 1917 ignore strikes and their impact. According to Diane Koenker and William Rosenberg, the eight months of revolution in 1917 witnessed 1,019 strikes involving 2,441,850 workers and employees, led by metal and textile workers (as before), but reinforced by printers and service personnel. It was all a clear expression of dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government and moderate socialists.
Revolution also swept across the countryside, where peasants now found little to prevent the realization of long-standing claims and aspirations. Their maximalist expectations were evident early, as in a resolution from Riazan: ‘The revolution is already three weeks old and nothing has happened yet’—a transparent allusion to the all-important land question. Although the government initially dampened expectations of immediate repartition of land, by early summer the peasant movement had gathered a full head of steam, with a steady increase in disorder, violence, and collective seizure of land. The peasants shared a fundamentally revolutionary, not liberal, conception of law and justice: land should belong to those who actually cultivate it, not the landlords and speculators who merely prevented this rational distribution of land. The war redoubled their feeling of injustice: while city folk obtained draft exemptions and special concessions, the long-suffering village sacrificed its men for slaughter at the front.
The agrarian question deepened the rift within the coalition. The Main Land Committee and Chernov’s Ministry of Agriculture became bastions of SR influence and, contrary to the express wishes of the Provisional Government, proposed the ‘socialization’ of land—that is, the abolition of private property and transfer of ownership to peasant communes. The Ministry believed that, in the midst of revolution, just demands took precedence over the laws of a defunct regime. But liberal ministers saw only a crass violation of the rule of law and resigned from the coalition. Significantly, the socialists themselves were divided on this issue. Whereas Chernov fanned the flames of peasant revolution, the Menshevik Minister of Internal Affairs ordered his apparatus to combat peasant lawlessness and to assert control over the land committees. Such fissures, along ideological and class lines, paralleled and deepened the divisions in society at large.
By early summer the coalition was in a shambles, its popularity waning. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in June exposed deep rifts on the left and subjected the coalition to withering criticism. To stave off a Bolshevik challenge, the soviet leadership cancelled anti-government demonstrations on 10 June and ordered its own march a week later. It proved a stunning fiasco, as soldiers and workers carried Bolshevik banners: ‘Down with the Capitalist Ministers’, ‘Peace’, and ‘Down with the Bourgeoisie’. The rhetoric of class war prevailed: conciliation, appeals to unity and ‘nation’, in fact any appeals not based squarely on ‘class’ and ‘class conflict’ fell on deaf ears.
The crisis culminated in the famous ‘July Days’, when soldiers and workers (with the aid of lower-echelon Bolshevik organs) staged an abortive insurrection. The July Days bequeathed unforgettable visual images—the populace scattering under rifle fire in Petrograd’s main squares, angry crowds attacking soviet leaders (‘Why haven’t you bastards taken power?’). The government blamed the Bolsheviks, arrested several key leaders, and accused Lenin himself of ‘treason’ (claiming that he had taken German money to subvert the democratic revolution). As Alexander Rabinowitch has shown, however, the Bolshevik leaders did less to lead than to follow popular radicalism. Troops loyal to the Provisional Government suppressed the disorders, but the crisis reinforced the rhetoric of violence, the sense of insurmountable problems, and lack of confidence in the government’s ability to deal with them. For the short term, however, the combination of force and anti-Bolshevik propaganda restored some semblance of authority.
