Lenin, determined to put an end to defeatism in his ranks, returned to the fray the next day with the demand that the Central Committee condemn the “opposition.” It was a strange demand, given that it was he who opposed the will of the majority. In the debates that ensued, he managed to split his rivals. A resolution condemning them won with a vote of 10–5. As a result, the five who stood up against Lenin to the end—Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Miliutin, and Nogin—resigned. On November 4,
On November 1, the Central Committee … adopted a resolution which, in effect, rejected agreement with [other] parties in the Soviet for the purpose of forming a socialist Soviet Government.… We regard the formation of such a government essential to the prevention of further bloodshed.… The dominant group in the Central Committee has undertaken a number of acts which demonstrate clearly its firm determination not to allow the formation of a government made up of soviet parties and insists on a purely Bolshevik Government, no matter what the consequences and how many victims the workers and soldiers will have to sacrifice. We cannot assume responsibility for this fatal policy of the Central Committee, pursued in opposition to the will of the vast part of the proletariat and the troops.… On these grounds, we resign from the Central Committee so as to have the right to defend our point of view openly before the mass of workers and soldiers and to appeal to them to support our slogan: “Long live the government of soviet parties!”29
Two days later, Kamenev resigned as chairman of the CEC; four People’s Commissars (out of eleven) did likewise: Nogin (Trade and Industry), Rykov (Interior), Miliutin (Agriculture), and Teodorovich (Supply). Shliapnikov, the Commissar for Labor, signed the letter but stayed on the job. Several Bolshevik lower-level commissars resigned as well. “We take the position,” the commissars’ letter read:
that it is necessary to form a socialist government of all the soviet parties. We believe that only the formation of such a government would make it possible to consolidate the results of the heroic struggle of the working class and the revolutionary army in the days of October–November. We believe that there is only one alternative to this: the maintenance of an exclusively Bolshevik Government by means of political terror. This is the path taken by the Council of People’s Commissars. We cannot and do not want to go this way. We see that this leads to the removal of mass proletarian organizations from the management of political life, to the establishment of an irresponsible regime, and to the destruction of the Revolution and the country. We cannot bear responsibility for this policy and therefore tender to the CEC our resignations as People’s Commissars.30
Lenin lost no sleep over these protests and resignations, confident that the straying sheep would soon return to the fold, as indeed they did. Where else could they go? The socialist parties ostracized them; the liberals, should they take power, would put them in jail; while the politicians of the right would hang them. Their very physical survival depended on Lenin’s success.
The decisions adopted by the Bolshevik Central Committee signified that the Bolsheviks would share power only with parties that were prepared to accept a role of junior partner and rubber-stamp Bolshevik resolutions. Except for four months (December 1917–March 1918) when the Bolsheviks allowed a few Left SRs into their cabinet, the so-called Soviet Government never reflected the composition of the soviets: it was and remained a Bolshevik Government in soviet disguise.
Lenin had now managed to beat off the claims for a share of power by rival socialist parties, but he still had to cope with the insistence of the CEC that it was the soviet parliament to which his commissars owed responsibility.
