The Bolsheviks brilliantly exploited the situation, but owed much to ‘objective conditions’—the ongoing war and economic collapse, the weakness of the government, the fissures within possible rival parties, and the inability of interest groups and democratic organizations to mobilize public opinion. The Bolsheviks exploited Kerensky’s ill-timed counter-assaults to evoke the spectre of ‘counter-revolution’ and, on the night of 24 October, began seizing key centres of power in Petrograd (the Winter Palace itself, of little strategic value, was seized only the next evening). The Bolsheviks then informed the assembled soviet congress that they had taken power in the name of the soviets and were creating a temporary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. The frustrated SR and Menshevik delegates could only denounce the action and stalk out of the assembly. As Kerensky fled Petrograd in a vain search for support, the Bolsheviks set about constructing a new state order.
Rebuilding the State
October signified much, but huge questions remained—how to extend and consolidate soviet power over the vast empire, and how to build the world’s first socialist state and society. Bolsheviks had to address these problems under conditions of war, not only the ongoing Great War but a violent civil war implicit in Bolshevik ideology and the process by which they had come to power.
These first years were, in Merle Fainsod’s felicitous phrase, ‘the crucible of communism’—an attempt to create a socialist state, economy, society, and culture later known as ‘war communism’. The latter phrase signifies much, not only the wartime conditions, but also a violent militancy that informed Bolshevik measures. Historians have passionately debated the regime’s intentions, the coherence of its war communist programme, the relative weight of civil war and ideology as causal factors, and the role of Lenin. Estimates of Lenin vary wildly, from that of malevolent ideologue and precursor of Stalin to that of a moderate pragmatist opposed to utopian leaps. Some see the ‘seeds of totalitarianism’ (to use an outmoded term) in Bolshevism itself; others blame the crescendo of authoritarianism and violence on the civil war alone.
Such one-sided interpretations obscure the ambiguities, alternatives, and texture of early Soviet history. October most certainly did not mark the end of the revolution; the new Bolshevik regime had to surmount the same social and national movements that destroyed its predecessors. But the Bolsheviks approached these issues in their own inimitable way. In particular, they attached great significance to ideology—hence the obsessive determination to build socialism as the historical antithesis of capitalism. Regarding ‘class war’ as the dominant reality, they ruthlessly sought to abolish the market and associated ‘bourgeois’ institutions, cultural values and ethical norms. Still, Bolshevik behaviour cannot be reduced to ideology: they also drew—sometimes unconsciously, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes enthusiastically—on traditional political culture and bureaucratic power. It was not the contradictions between these different impulses but their fusion that led to the great successes—and excesses—of the early Soviet regime.
The Bolsheviks used the cover of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets to legitimize the seizure of power and formation of a workers’ and peasants’ government. But they made haste not only to consolidate power but to
