The Russian Revolution полностью

The Constitution of 1918 met Napoleon’s criterion: a good constitution, he said, was short and confused. The opening article proclaimed Russia “a republic of soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies”; “all power in the center and in the localities” belonged to the soviets.²¹ These statements raised more questions than they answered because the articles that followed failed to clarify the division of authority either between the center and the localities or among the soviets themselves. According to Article 56, “within the borders of its jurisdiction, the congress of soviets (of the region, province, district, and volost’) is the highest authority.” Since, however, each region embraced several provinces, and each province numerous districts and volosti, the principle was meaningless. To further complicate matters, Article 61 contradicted the principle that congresses of soviets were the “highest authority” on their territory by requiring local soviets to confine themselves to local issues and to execute the orders of the “supreme organs of the Soviet Government.”

The failure of the 1918 Constitution to specify the spheres of competence of the soviet authorities at their different territorial levels merely emphasized that the Bolsheviks did not view the matter as a serious inhibition. Even so, it strengthened centrifugal tendencies by giving them constitutional sanction.*

To gain full freedom of action, Lenin had to rid himself quickly of accountability to the Central Executive Committee (CEC).

On Bolshevik initiative, the Second Congress of Soviets dismissed the old Ispolkom and elected a new one, in which the Bolsheviks held 58 percent of the seats. This arrangement guaranteed that the Bolsheviks, who voted as a bloc, could carry or defeat any motion, but they still had to contend with a vociferous minority of Left SRs, SRs, and Mensheviks. The SRs and Mensheviks refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the October coup and denied the Bolsheviks the right to form a government. The Left SRs accepted the October coup, but they retained all kinds of democratic illusions, one of which was a coalition government composed of all parties represented in the soviets.

The non-Bolshevik minority took seriously the principle, to which the Bolsheviks paid only lip service, that the CEC was a socialist legislature which had final say on the composition of the cabinet and its activities. These powers it enjoyed by virtue of a resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets which had been drafted by Lenin himself:

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies resolves: To constitute for the administration of the country prior to the convocation of the Constituent Assembly a Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to be known as the Council of People’s Commissars.… Control over the activity of the People’s Commissars and the right of replacing them is vested in the All-Russian Congress of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies and its Central Executive Committee.²²

Nothing could be clearer. Nevertheless, Lenin was firmly determined to throw this principle overboard and make his cabinet independent of the CEC or any other external body. This he achieved within ten days after becoming head of state.

The historic confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the CEC occurred over the insistence of the latter that the Bolsheviks broaden the Sovnarkom to include representatives of the other socialist parties. All the parties opposed the Bolsheviks’ monopolizing of the ministerial posts: after all, they had been chosen by the Congress of Soviets to represent the soviets, not themselves. This opposition surfaced and assumed dangerous forms three days after the Bolshevik coup, when the Union of Railroad Employees, the largest trade union in Russia, presented an ultimatum demanding a socialist coalition government. Anyone whose memories reached to October 1905 would have remembered the decisive role which the railroad strike played in the capitulation of tsarism.

The union, which had hundreds of thousands of members dispersed throughout the country, had the capacity to paralyze transport. In August 1917 it had supported Kerensky against Kornilov. In October, it initially favored the slogan “All Power to the Soviets,” but as soon as its officers realized the uses which the Bolsheviks made of it, they turned against them, insisting that the Sovnarkom give way to a coalition cabinet.²³ On October 29, the union declared that unless the government was promptly broadened to include other socialist parties, it would order a strike. This was a serious threat, for the Bolsheviks, in preparation for Kerensky’s counteroffensive, needed trains to move troops to the front.