The Russian Revolution полностью

Such passivity infuriated Lenin: he feared that the favorable moment for an insurrection would pass. On September 24 or 25, he moved from Helsinki to Vyborg (still in Finnish territory) to be nearer the scene of action. From there, on September 29, he dispatched a third letter to the Central Committee, under the title “The Crisis Has Ripened.” His principal operative recommendations were contained in the sixth part of the letter, first made public in 1925. It had to be frankly conceded, Lenin wrote, that some party members wanted to postpone the power seizure until the next Congress of Soviets. He totally rejected this approach: “To pass up such a moment and ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets is complete idiocy or complete treason”:

The Bolsheviks are now guaranteed the success of the uprising: (1) we can (if we do not ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets) strike suddenly from three points: Petersburg, Moscow, and the Baltic Fleet … (5) we have the technical capability to take power in Moscow (which could even begin so as to paralyze the enemy with its suddenness); (6) we have thousands of armed workers and soldiers who can at once seize the Winter Palace and the General Staff, the telephone station and all the major printing plants.… If we were to strike at once, suddenly, from three points—Petersburg, Moscow, the Baltic Fleet—then the chances are 99 percent that we will win with fewer losses than we suffered on July 3–5, because the troops will not move against a government of peace.*

In view of the fact that the Central Committee did not answer his “entreaties” and even censored his articles, Lenin submitted his resignation. This, of course, was bluff. To discuss their differences, the Central Committee requested Lenin to return to Petrograd.¹¹²

Lenin’s associates to a man rejected his demand for an immediate armed uprising, preferring a slower, safer course. Their tactics were formulated by Trotsky, who thought Lenin’s proposals too “impetuous.” Trotsky wanted the armed uprising disguised as the assumption of power by an All-Russian Congress of Soviets—not, however, one properly convened, which would certainly refuse to do so, but one which the Bolsheviks would convene on their own initiative in defiance of established procedures, and pack with followers: a congress of pro-Bolshevik soviets camouflaged as a national congress. Seen in retrospect, this undoubtedly was the correct course to follow because the country would not have tolerated the overt assumption of power by a single party, as Lenin advocated. To succeed beyond the initial days, the coup had to be given some sort of “soviet” legitimacy, even if a spurious one.

Lenin’s sense of urgency was in good measure inspired by the fear of being preempted by the Constituent Assembly. On August 9, the Provisional Government finally announced a schedule for that body: elections on November 12 and the opening session on November 28. Although on some days the Bolsheviks deluded themselves that they could win a majority of the seats in the Assembly, in their hearts they knew they had no chance given that the peasants were certain to vote solidly for the Socialists-Revolutionaries. Since Bolshevik strength lay in the cities and in the army, and they alone had soviet organizations, the Bolsheviks’ only hope of claiming a national mandate was through the soviets. Otherwise, all was lost. Once the country made known its will through a democratic election, they could no longer claim that they spoke for the “people” and that the new government was “capitalist.” If they were to take power, therefore, they had to do so before the elections to the Assembly. Once they were in control, the adverse results of the elections could be neutralized: as a Bolshevik publication put it, the composition of the Assembly “will strongly depend on who convenes it.”¹¹³ Lenin concurred: the “success” of the elections to the Assembly would be best assured after the coup.¹¹⁴ As events were to show, this meant that the Bolsheviks would either tamper with the electoral results or else disperse the Assembly. This was for Lenin a weighty reason to hurry his colleagues, to the point of threatening resignation.