The Russian Revolution полностью

Lenin now went to Bonch-Bruevich’s apartment to draft key decrees for the congress’s ratification. The two principal decrees on which he counted to win the support of soldiers and peasants for the coup, dealing with peace and land, were later in the day submitted to a caucus of the Bolshevik delegates, which approved them without debate.

The congress resumed at 10:40 p.m. Lenin, greeted with tumultuous applause, presented the decrees on peace and land. They sailed through on a voice vote.

The Decree on Peace²¹¹ was misnamed since it was not a legislative act, but an appeal to all the belligerent powers to open immediate negotiations for a “democratic” peace without annexations and contributions, guaranteeing every nation “the right to self-determination.” Secret diplomacy was to be abolished and secret treaties made public. Until peace negotiations could get underway, Russia proposed a three-month armistice.

The Decree on Land²¹² was lifted bodily from the program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as supplemented with 242 instructions from peasant communities published two months earlier in Izvestiia of the All-Russian Union of Peasants’ Deputies.²¹³ Instead of ordering the nationalization all the land—that is, the transfer of ownership to the state—as the Bolshevik program demanded, it called for its “socialization”—that is, withdrawal from commerce and transfer to peasant communes for use. All landed properties of landlords, the state, the church, and others not engaged in farming were to be confiscated without compensation and turned over to the volost’ land committees until such time as the Constituent Assembly decided on their ultimate disposal. Private holdings of peasants, however, were exempt. This was an unabashed concession to peasant wishes which had little in common with the Bolshevik land program and was designed to win peasant support in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.

The third and final decree presented to the delegates set up a new government called the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, or Sovnarkom). It was to serve only until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, scheduled for the following month: hence, like its predecessor, it was named “Provisional Government.”²¹⁴ Lenin at first offered its chairmanship to Trotsky, but Trotsky refused. Lenin was none too eager to enter the cabinet, preferring to work from behind the scenes. “At first Lenin did not want to join the government,” Lunacharskii recalled. “ ‘I will work in the Central Committee of the party,’ he said. But we said no. We would not agree to that. We made him assume principal responsibility. Everyone prefers to be only a critic.”²¹⁵ So Lenin took over the chairmanship of the Sovnarkom, while concurrently serving, in fact if not in name, as chairman of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The new cabinet had the same structure as the old, with the addition of one new post, that of chairman (rather than commissar) for Nationality Affairs. All the commissars were members of the Bolshevik Party and subject to its discipline: the Left SRs were invited to join but refused, insisting on a cabinet representative of “all the forces of revolutionary democracy,” including the Mensheviks and SRs.²¹⁶ The composition of the Sovnarkom was as follows:*

Chairman

Vladimir Ulianov (Lenin)

Internal Affairs

A. I. Rykov

Agriculture

V. P. Miliutin

Labor

A. G. Shliapnikov

War and Navy

V. A. Ovseenko (Antonov)

N. V. Krylenko

P. E. Dybenko

Trade and Industry

V. P. Nogin

Enlightenment

A. V. Lunacharskii

Finance

I. I. Skvortsov (Stepanov)

Foreign Affairs

L. D. Bronstein (Trotsky)

Justice

G. I. Oppokov (Lomov)

Supply

I. A. Teodorovich

Post and Telegraphs

N. P. Avilov (Glebov)

Chairman for Nationality Affairs

I. V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin)

The existing Ispolkom was declared deposed and replaced with a new one, composed of 101 members, of whom 62 were Bolsheviks and 29 Left SRs. Kamenev was named chairman. In the decree establishing the Sovnarkom, drafted by Lenin, the Sovnarkom was made accountable to the Ispolkom, which thereby became something of a parliament with authority to veto legislation and cabinet appointments.

The Bolshevik high command, exceedingly anxious at this uncertain time not to appear to be preempting power, insisted that the decrees passed by the congress were enacted on a provisional basis, subject to approval, emendation, or rejection by the Constituent Assembly. In the words of a Communist historian:

In the days of October, the sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly was not denied … in all its resolutions [the Second Congress of Soviets] took the Constituent Assembly into account and adopted its basic decisions “until its convocation.”²¹⁷