The Russian Revolution полностью

Consistent with the traditional Menshevik and SR view of the Soviets as organs of “democratic” control over the “bourgeoisie,” the Ispolkom decided on March 1, with a majority of 13–8, not to join the government which the Duma was in the process of forming.* By this decision, the socialist intelligentsia reserved for itself the right to steer and criticize the government without having to bear governmental responsibility: a position very much like the one which the parliamentary opposition had enjoyed vis-à-vis tsarism. As in the case of the Duma leadership’s hesitancy to claim political power, the radical intelligentsia was inspired not only by theoretical but also by personal considerations. The events of February 26–27, 1917, may appear in the eyes of posterity as marking an irreversible break with the past, but this is not how they appeared to contemporaries. At this time, only Petrograd had risen in rebellion—no one else followed its lead. Punitive expeditions from the front could arrive at any moment. A contemporary of these events, and their historian, Serge Melgunov, observes that at this point several thousand well led and armed men could easily have retaken control of Petrograd, after which the lives of the intellectuals would have been at great risk.⁸⁰ It seemed, therefore, more prudent to let the “bourgeois” Duma take charge and manipulate it from behind the scenes.

In this fashion, on February 27, 1917, there emerged in Russia a peculiar system of government called dvoevlastie, or dyarchy: it lasted until October 25–26, when it yielded to the Bolshevik dictatorship. In theory, the Provisional Committee of the Duma—soon renamed the Provisional Government—bore full administrative responsibility, and the Soviet confined itself to functions of control, much as a legislature might in relation to an executive. The reality, however, was very different. The Soviet, or more precisely its Ispolkom, administered and legislated on its own often without so much as informing the government. Second, the partners in this arrangement were unable to cooperate effectively because they had very different objectives in mind. The Duma leaders wanted to contain the Revolution; the Soviet leaders wanted to deepen it. The former would have been happy to stop the flow of events at the point reached by nightfall on February 27. For the latter, February 27 was a mere stepping-stone to the “true”—that is, socialist—revolution.

Having decided they had no alternative but to form a cabinet in defiance of the Tsar’s wishes, the Duma leaders were still inhibited by two considerations: lack of legitimacy and lack of means to control the unruly mobs. The more conservative members of the Provisional Committee, among them Shulgin and Guchkov, were of the opinion that one more attempt should be made to persuade Nicholas to let the Duma name the cabinet. But the majority thought this futile, preferring to seek legitimacy from the Petrograd Soviet, or, more precisely, from the socialist intelligentsia in the Ispolkom.

The decision was curious in the extreme. The Soviet, after all, was a private body, irregularly constituted and directed by representatives of socialist parties whom no one had elected. The best that could be said for it was that it represented the workers and soldiers of the city of Petrograd and environs, at most 1 million citizens in a nation of 170 million. From the point of view of legitimacy, the Fourth Duma—even allowing for the restricted franchise on which it had been chosen—had a better claim to speak for the country at large. But its leaders believed that in numbers lay safety: cooperation with the socialist parties would enable them better to restrain the mobs as well as to cope with a potential counterrevolution. At this point, the Ispolkom was solidly in the hands of Mensheviks, who acquiesced to the Duma’s assuming formal governmental authority. The decision to seek legitimacy from the Soviet, as represented by the Ispolkom, was therefore psychologically understandable. But it hardly provided the new government with the legitimacy it needed. When on March 2 Miliukov, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, was challenged from the audience which he was addressing, “Who elected you?” he could only answer, “We have been elected by the Russian Revolution”⁸¹—a claim that any other aspirant to power could make with equal right.*