THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

AFTER THE MARCH REVOLUTION, 1917
Lenin (1870–1924)

THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION, 1917
Soviet Constitution

1. AFTER THE MARCH REVOLUTION, 1917

For the moment the only authority was that of the Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, and for eight months this Government struggled with the double task of ruling Russia and conducting the war. Either task alone would have been beyond its capacity. The two together broke it completely.

In the meantime events had been taking a strange turn. Workers – mostly factory workers in the towns, though in some instances peasants in the countryside – and soldiers and sailors, took it upon themselves to form Soviets (that is, councils) for the discussion of their needs and to express their views. Because there was no strong central government, these Soviets, expressing the mind of the masses of the people, acquired a political character. The Petrograd Soviet, the most powerful of them all, issued orders to the people of the city, and even to the Army, and so virtually challenged the Provisional Government. Before long most cities throughout Russia had Soviets chosen in similar ways.

The outside world strangely misjudged the meaning of these events. The Allied Governments welcomed the Russian Revolution for two reasons. First, there was a general belief that autocratic Czardom had been replaced by a moderate democracy similar to those of western Europe and of America. Second, because Russian failure in the war was blamed on Czarist incompetence, there seemed reason to hope that the new Government would conduct its campaigns with more energy and efficiency.

At first this hope looked like being fulfilled. In May the Government formally declared to the Allies that Russia would honour its undertakings and was determined to achieve victory. Kerensky, now War Minister, toured the Russian armies urging them to new efforts. In July a Russian offensive was launched in Galicia. At first this had some success, chiefly because the Russians were fighting Austrian troops who had little heart in the war. When, later, they met Germans, they were outclassed and compelled to retreat. This was not merely a military set-back: it undermined the whole authority of the Provisional Government.

By the autumn of 1917 there was general discontent with the Government. It had neither achieved success in the field nor – as the mass of the people wished – had it taken Russia out of the war. Also it had failed to satisfy the peasants' clamour for land. As this discontent deepened, there were those eager to use it for their own advantage. The instruments ready to hand were the Soviets. The supreme leader was Vladimir llyich Ulyanov whose simpler pen-name was Lenin.

Lenin (1870–1924)

Lenin's father had been an inspector of schools, and so Lenin was brought up in a scholarly atmosphere which encouraged independent thinking. In 1887 his brother was hanged for plotting to assassinate the Czar. Lenin was then at the impressionable age of seventeen, and henceforward his ideas became more and more revolutionary. They were intensified by what he saw of the hopeless poverty of masses of the Russian people, and he became convinced that Marxism was the only means of meeting the people's needs. Karl Marx (1813–83) was a German writer whose most notable book, Das Kapital, became the foundation of modern socialism. It advocated the abolition of private enterprise and the direction of all industry, including agriculture, by the State or by groups of workers. Believing that a ‘class war' had always existed, in various forms, between the master-class and the workers, he urged that this 'war' would have to be intensified if the workers' aims were to be achieved. Not surprisingly, therefore, Lenin organized in Petrograd the Militant Union for the Liberation of the Working Classes, and from 1897 until 1900 he was exiled in Siberia. Later he carried on his activities from outside Russia, first in Munich and then in Switzerland.

In 1903 a Conference of the United Russian Social Democratic Party was held in London. Lenin's forceful intervention in the debates split the members into two sections. Lenin, who advocated violent class war and an end to all co-operation with moderates, managed to secure a temporary majority of the members, and thenceforward his followers called themselves Bolsheviks, from the Russian word for 'majority'. Their opponents therefore were known as Mensheviks (minority). Though in fact Lenin's more permanent group within the party was a highly organized minority of professional revolutionaries, they continued to call themselves Bolsheviks.

During the 1905 disturbances Lenin was back in Petrograd where he incited violence against the moderate democrats and the Duma. Thereafter he lived abroad writing pamphlets and articles and organizing revolutionary propaganda of all kinds. So he continued until the outbreak of war in 1914 and during its opening stages. The breakdown of Russia's war efforts and the exhaustion of the country presented exactly the conditions necessary for the spread of Lenin's ideas. The uncertainty and confusion resulting from the Czar's abdication in mid-March 1917 opened the way for any man with clear-cut aims and a tightly organized band of followers. The Germans, thinking that Leninism would increase Russian confusion still further, made it possible for Lenin to cross Germany from Switzerland (which he did in a sealed railway car) and, via Sweden, to arrive in Petrograd on 16th April 1917. In contrast to the vacillation of the Provisional Government, that very day Lenin made known his three-fold policy for Russia: immediate peace, the confiscation of landed estates without compensation to the owners, and government through Soviets of workers' deputies. Though at the moment the Bolsheviks were in a minority (in spite of their name) on the Soviets, Lenin rightly judged that his programme was certain to win the support of the masses of the workers, both in towns and in the country. Further, declaring that the March Revolution had been insufficient, he called for a second revolution that would achieve his objects. Thus the stage was set for the November Revolution which swept the Bolsheviks into power.

2. THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION, 1917

Soviet Constitution

We have seen that the turn in the tide against the Provisional Government began with the failure of the July offensive in Galicia. The fact was that only a miracle could have made good within a short time the deficiencies which the Czarist regime had left behind, and Kerensky and the other members of the Government were not miracle-workers. But when the Russian people saw that war was no more successful under the new Government than under the old they turned against the whole policy of war. Kerensky tried a compromise: he wished to remain loyal to the Allies and to seek a peace without annexations or indemnities. Here, however, the Allies were not helpful: they refused to consider any peace until they had won an outright victory. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were able to declare that Kerensky was fighting for the benefit of foreign Capitalist governments. Bolshevik propaganda among the troops led to a stream of desertions by men who hurried home so as not to lose their share of the lands that they expected to be seized from the landowners and divided up. So, during October, the Government's authority declined and the Bolsheviks' influence correspondingly rose.

The decisive day was 7th November 1917. On that day an All-Russian Congress of Soviets was to meet at Petrograd. During the previous night Bolshevik troops were posted at key-points – in railway stations, telegraph and telephone offices, power plants, and the like. The Petrograd garrison recognized the authority of the Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets. Thus the Leninists gained control of Petrograd, and before the day was out the members of the Provisional Government were seized except for Kerensky who managed to escape.

On 8th November the All-Russian Congress set up a new Government called the Soviet of the People's Commissars which was to be provisional until a Constituent Assembly could be convened. Of this Government Lenin was President and Trotsky was Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In order to give momentum to the swing of popular opinion Lenin at once declared that landed estates were to be handed over to local committees. A fortnight later Trotsky opened a peace offensive. Through the Allied ambassadors at Petrograd he proposed an immediate armistice and negotiations for peace. Because the Allies refused to adopt these proposals the Russians themselves opened negotiations with Germany. On 5th December they signed an armistice at Brest Litovsk, and this was followed by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk of 3rd March 1918. Its terms entailed tremendous concessions by Russia. But to the Bolsheviks peace at almost any price was essential if they were to be free to carry out their policies. This accorded also with the mood of the Russian people; and Lenin knew that unless the people got satisfaction from the Bolsheviks there would be another swing of public opinion that might sweep away him and his party just as their predecessors had been swept away.