MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov) - Even after he reigned supreme in his own party and had managed to get its Central Committee to pass a resolution calling for an uprising, Lenin still had, right up to the day of the coup itself, to put down sporadic pockets of resistance among the Bolsheviks.
Many party members still sided with Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev and other Bolshevik leaders who thought that the party should have been preparing itself not for an armed coup, but for elections to the Constitutional Assembly. They saw Russia’s immediate future as a new form of peaceful dual power: of the Constitutional Assembly, in which the Bolsheviks would be in the minority, and the Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks would predominate.
“It would be a profound historical untruth,” Kamenev and Zinoviev argued, “to approach the issue of takeover of power by the proletarian party from the ‘now or never’ angle. No. The proletarian party will grow as its program is explained to ever broader masses.”
Juxtaposing their own position with that of Lenin they said: “Two tactics are locked in combat here: the tactics of conspiracy and the tactics based on faith in the driving forces of the Russian revolution.”
That position was no less utopian than the hopes Lenin and Trotsky pinned on a world revolution. The “Constitutional Assembly plus the Soviets” formula was unconvincing, as dual power could not have existed in Russia indefinitely. But at least it was a utopia of compromise, rather than war.
In a last-ditch attempt to stop Lenin, Kamenev wrote his famous letter published in Maxim Gorky’s newspaper: “To assume the initiative of an armed uprising at this juncture, given the current balance of social forces, independently and a few days before the congress of the Soviets would be an inadmissible and disastrous step for the revolutionary cause.”
Lenin regarded the publication of this letter on the eve of the uprising as a betrayal, and demanded that Kamenev and Zinoviev, his closest friends, be expelled from the party. Characteristically, however, after conferring, the Central Committee declined the leader’s request.
Seizing power several days before the congress of the Soviets, which embodied the people’s rule, did not look particularly democratic. Many within the party felt embarrassed. Lenin and Trotsky, of course, had no such doubts. They had shown their true attitude to the institutions of people’s power back in July and again in September when they called for an immediate dissolution of the Democratic Conference.
However, there were two important considerations that not even Lenin and Trotsky could ignore: “For eight months the masses lived an intense political life,” Trotsky writes. “Soviet parliamentarianism had become the daily mechanics of the people’s political life. If issues of strikes, street gatherings and of sending a regiment to the front were decided by voting, could the masses forego an independent solution of the issue of an uprising? But that priceless and the only gain of the February revolution threw up new problems. One could not call the masses to battle on behalf of the Soviet without formally raising the issue before the Soviet, that is, without putting the issue of an uprising to open debate in which representatives of the hostile camp would take part. Obviously, there was a need to create a special… disguised Soviet body to lead the uprising.”
In other words, while previously tsarism had been the main obstacle in the way of a Bolshevik seizure of power, it was now people’s rule that stood in the way, along with the Provisional Government.
But nothing was to be gained by launching a call for an uprising solely on behalf of the Bolshevik party. Trotsky notes that the support of the Soviets was vital for mustering a sufficient strike force. The party itself did not have enough fighters for the task.
“One should distinguish three groups among the millions on which the party… expected to lean,” Trotsky writes, “one was already following the Bolsheviks under any circumstances; another and more numerous group supported the Bolsheviks inasmuch as they worked through the Soviets; the third followed the Soviets despite the fact that they were dominated by the Bolsheviks: attempts to conduct an uprising through the party directly never succeeded.”
One may argue about exactly how many people would have followed the Bolsheviks and the Soviets respectively, but on the whole, the picture painted by Trotsky was accurate. For example, reports from Moscow said: “It is hard to say whether the troops will answer the call of the Moscow Bolshevik Committee. But all are likely to answer the call of the Soviet.” Even in Petrograd, “the cradle of the revolution,” the situation in October was roughly similar.
As a prominent Bolshevik, Volodarsky, reported: “The general impression is that nobody is anxious to take to the streets, but they will all turn up if the Soviet calls them.”
There was an evident paradox. The Bolsheviks could not obtain a mandate from the Soviets to stage a coup, but they were obliged to use the forces that supported the Soviets. One must give due to the dexterity with which Lenin and Trotsky solved the problem, not withstanding an obvious element of political sleight-of-hand.
Using their majority in the Soviets, the Leninists created what Trotsky described as “a special, disguised Soviet body for leading the uprising,” called the Military Revolutionary Committee. It was a masterstroke. On the one hand, the committee was elected legally within the framework of Soviet democracy, and on the other hand, it was totally controlled by the Bolsheviks, which enabled it to act unbeknownst to the other forces represented in the Soviets. The Bolshevik party now had a free hand: it could proceed through the Military Revolutionary Committee on behalf of the Soviets but without notifying the Soviets about it. They thus neatly sidestepped the problem of people’s rule.
“Who should seize power?” Lenin wrote in the evening of October 24. “At present that is immaterial: let it be seized by the Military Revolutionary Committee or ‘another institution’ that will declare that it will turn over power to the true representatives of the people.”
Trotsky explains: “the mysterious ‘another institution’ is the secret name of the Bolshevik Central Committee.”
The scheme was crystal clear. Formally power would be seized by the Military Revolutionary Committee on behalf of the Soviets, which would bring the masses onto the streets in the numbers that the Bolsheviks needed, but actual power would be taken by “another institution” – the Bolshevik Central Committee. As for the other Socialists, who would only see the light at the last moment, there would be nothing left for them to do but scream indignantly and wave their fists as the train left the station.
Moralizing over the ethics of political struggle is futile. So let me just note that Lenin had always had a very flexible approach to the moral aspects of politics. Suffice it to recall an episode that prompted a furious reaction from Lenin.
On the eve of the uprising, following the publication of Kamenev’s famous letter, the Soviets naturally had some questions for the Bolsheviks. To allay their suspicions, Trotsky used some weasel words to the effect that “the Soviet is not planning an uprising in the coming days” and hence that there was nothing to discuss. Kamenev, taking advantage of the situation, popped up to declare that he subscribed to Comrade Trotsky’s every word.
The unity of the two men, who were otherwise known to be constantly at loggerheads, was in fact a continuation of their duel – only the spectators could not see them kicking each other under the table. While Trotsky tried to conceal the actions of the Central Committee in preparing the uprising, Kamenev’s aim was to paralyze these actions by publicly catching the conspirators at their word.
Learning about the incident, Lenin himself delivered a furious diatribe. “During the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, Kamenev resorted to a mean trick: surprise, surprise, he fully agrees with Trotsky. But isn’t it obvious that Trotsky could not, had no right to and should not have said more than he had said in front of the enemies (i.e. the leadership of the Soviets – P. R.). Is it hard to understand that… the decision on the need for an armed uprising, that the time for it is ripe and that all-round preparations are in order, etc., makes it incumbent upon public speakers to put the blame and attribute the initiative to their opponent? Kamenev’s actions are sheer chicanery.” No comment. The reader doesn’t need to be told the difference between politics and chicanery.
Even on the day of the October coup, many party leaders who had caved in to Lenin’s will had sneaking doubts about the soundness of their choice. There exists a letter from Anatoly Lunacharsky to his wife, who had stayed in Switzerland. Written on the day of the October revolution, it reads in part: “Sweetheart, it is the morning of the 25th. The struggle for power has practically begun: politically, of course; I have ranged myself with the Bolsheviks. I can think of another way out: a purely democratic coalition… but it requires all the sides to display so much goodwill and political wisdom that it is probably a utopia.”
Lenin had prevailed upon all of them: Marx and Engels, his own party and the Soviets. And he made the revolution. He was guided by a blind faith in “international luck.” Lenin had no faith in the victory of socialism in a single country. Besides, being a convinced internationalist, he was least of all thinking about Russia.
“I am very well aware,” the leader wrote, “that the banner is in weak hands. And the workers of the most backward country won’t be able to hold it aloft until the workers of all the advanced countries come to their assistance. The socialist transformations we have accomplished are imperfect in many ways, weak and wanting: they will serve as pointers for the advanced West European workers who will say to themselves: ‘the Russians started it the wrong way’.”
The leader had no compunction about assigning Russia the role of a laboratory guinea pig exposed to pain so that others could live a better life. Just as the fall of the Paris Commune had given rich food for analysis to Marx, Engels and Lenin himself, he reasoned that even if the Russian experiment failed, new leaders of the world proletariat would draw lessons from the experience. And that was the most important thing.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
