The Russian Revolution полностью

The growing disenchantment with the soviets and the absenteeism of their socialist rivals enabled the Bolsheviks to gain in them an influence out of proportion to their national following. As their role in the soviets grew, they reverted to the old slogan: “All Power to the Soviets.”

The Bolsheviks passed an important milestone on their march to power on September 25 when they won a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet. (They had gained such a majority in Moscow on September 19.) Trotsky, who assumed the chairmanship of the Petrograd Soviet, immediately proceeded to turn it into an instrument with which to secure control of the urban soviets in the rest of the country. In the words of Izvestiia, the instant the Bolsheviks acquired a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet, they “transformed it into their party organization and, leaning on it, engaged in a partisan struggle to seize all the soviets nationwide.”¹⁰⁸ They largely ignored the Ispolkom chosen by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which remained under SR and Menshevik control, and proceeded to create a parallel pseudo-national soviet organization of their own, representing only those soviets in which they enjoyed pluralities.

In the more favorable political environment created by the Kornilov Affair and their successes in the soviets, the Bolsheviks revived the question of a coup d’état. Opinion was divided. The July debacle fresh in mind, Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed further “adventurism.” Notwithstanding their growing strength in the soviets, they argued, the Bolsheviks remained a minority party, so that even if they managed to take power, they would soon lose it to the combined forces of the “bourgeois counterrevolution” and the peasantry. On the other extreme stood Lenin, the principal proponent of immediate and resolute action. The Kornilov incident convinced him that the chances of a successful coup were better than ever and perhaps unrepeatable. On September 12 and 14 he wrote from Finland two letters to the Central Committee, called “The Bolsheviks Must Take Power” and “Marxism and Insurrection.”¹⁰⁹ “With a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies in both capital cities,” he wrote in the first, “the Bolsheviks can and must seize power.” Contrary to Kamenev and Zinoviev, the Bolsheviks not only could seize power but hold on to it: by proposing an immediate peace and giving land to the peasants, “the Bolsheviks can establish a government that no one will overthrow.” It was essential, however, to move swiftly because the Provisional Government might turn Petrograd over to the Germans or else the war could end. The “order of the day” was

armed insurrection in Petrograd and Moscow (plus their regions), the conquest of power, the overthrow of the government. We must consider how to agitate for this, without so expressing ourselves in print.

Once power had been taken in Petrograd and Moscow, the issue would be settled. Lenin dismissed as “naïve” the advice of Kamenev and Zinoviev that the party should await the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets in the hope of obtaining a majority: “no revolution waits for that”

In the second letter, Lenin dealt with the accusation that taking power by armed force was not “Marxism” but “Blanquism” and disposed of analogies with July: the “objective” situation in September was entirely different. He felt certain (possibly from information supplied by his German contacts) that Berlin would offer the Bolshevik government an armistice. “And to secure an armistice means to conquer the whole world.”¹¹⁰

The Central Committee took up Lenin’s letters on September 15. The laconic and almost certainly heavily censored protocols of this meeting* indicate that while Lenin’s associates hesitated to reject formally his advice (as Kamenev urged them to do), neither were they prepared to follow it: according to Trotsky, in September no one agreed with Lenin on the desirability of an immediate insurrection.¹¹¹ On Stalin’s motion, Lenin’s letters were circulated to the party’s major regional organizations, which was a way of avoiding action. Here the matter rested: at none of the six sessions that followed (September 20-October 5) was Lenin’s proposal referred to.†