The Russian Revolution полностью

I never heard arguments over matters of principle; the discussion always revolved around the problem of finding the best possible methods of carrying out a given measure. Matters of principle were decided elsewhere—in the Political Bureau of the Communist Party.… The two highest organs of the Government which I knew—the Council of People’s Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense—discussed practical ways to effect measures already decided upon by the inner sanctum of the party—its Political Bureau.†

To relieve the Sovnarkom of the many trivial issues that threatened to overburden its agenda, a Small Sovnarkom was created on December 18, 1917.

Government decisions became law when signed by Lenin and usually co-signed by one of the commissars, and then published in the official Gazette, the first issue of which appeared on October 28. It then acquired the status of a “decree” (dekret). Orders issued by the commissars on their own initiative were usually called “resolutions” (postanovleniia). Theory, however, was not always observed in practice. On certain occasions—this happened especially with laws sure to be unpopular—Lenin preferred that decrees be issued by the CEC and signed by its chairman, Sverdlov: this procedure had the effect of shifting the blame from the Bolsheviks onto the soviets. Some important laws were never published—such as the one creating the Cheka. Other measures—for instance, the introduction of the practice of taking hostages (September 1918)—came out in the name of the Commissar of Internal Affairs: it was published in Izvestiia, but is not included in the corpus of Soviet laws and decrees. Before long, the Bolsheviks reverted to the tsarist practice of legislating by means of secret circulars, which were not published at the time and many of which remain unpublished to this day: as under the old regime, the government resorted to this practice in matters involving state security.

In the first months of Bolshevik rule, decrees were issued not so much for their practical effect as for purposes of propaganda.⁶⁷ Without means to enforce his laws, and uncertain how long his regime would survive, Lenin thought of them as models from which future generations could learn how to make revolution. Since they were not expected to be implemented, the early decrees were exhortative in tone and careless in phrasing. Lenin gave this matter serious attention only three months after coming to power: on January 30, 1918, he ordered that legislative drafts be submitted for review to the Commissariat of Justice, which had trained jurists.⁶⁸ Laws issued from the spring of 1918 onward became so convoluted it is obvious they were not only reviewed but drafted by experienced bureaucrats of the old regime, who now entered Soviet service in large numbers.

It will be recalled (this page, above) that to appease critics on the Central Committee, Lenin and Trotsky agreed to continue negotiating with the Left SRs on their entry into the government, and to make one more effort to come to terms with the Mensheviks and SRs. The latter objective they never seriously pursued; Lenin had no desire to admit his socialist rivals into partnership. But he did want to bring in the Left SRs. He knew them for what they were: a loosely knit band of revolutionary hotheads, drunk on words, incapable of concerted action because of their faith in mass “spontaneity.” They were no threat, but they had their uses. Their presence in the cabinet would disarm the charge that the Bolsheviks monopolized the government: it would prove that any party prepared to “accept October”—the Bolshevik coup—was welcome. Still more valuable was the ability of the Left SRs to provide the Bolsheviks entry to the peasantry, with whose organizations they had no contact. Since it was absurd to pretend to the status of a government of “workers and peasants” without any peasant representatives, the Left SR access to the peasantry was a considerable asset. Lenin had great hopes (unrealistic, as events were to show) that the Left SRs would split the peasant vote for the Constituent Assembly and possibly give the Bolsheviks and their allies a majority.

The two parties negotiated in secret. On November 18, Izvestiia announced—prematurely, it turned out—that agreement had been reached with the Left SRs on their entry into the Sovnarkom. But the talks went on for three more weeks, in the course of which the two parties established a close working relationship. The Left SRs now joined forces with the Bolsheviks and helped them destroy the independent peasant movement dominated by the Socialists-Revolutionaries.