OCTOBER 1917: LENIN VERSUS MARXISM, THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE SOVIETS
RIA Novosti, Russia
Nov 1 2007
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(Part Two)
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov) – The
controversy around Lenin’s April Theses provoked a fierce struggle
within the Bolshevik Party between the advocates and opponents of an
immediate uprising. It took Lenin a great deal of time and effort to
win this struggle and to establish control over the Party.
In September 1917, the All-Russian Democratic Conference, convened
on the initiative of Soviets (Councils) of Soldiers, Workers and
Peasants Deputies, started its work. The Bolshevik faction, which
comprised more than 100 delegates, held an improvised party congress
during the conference.
At that time, Lenin, who had gone into hiding after the unsuccessful
July 1917 uprising, tried to persuade his Party to stage another
coup. In his letter to conference delegates, the Bolshevik leader
said the entire faction must conduct a propaganda campaign at local
factories and in the barracks, that an insurgent headquarters must be
established, forces distributed and loyal regiments sent to capture
the most important sectors.
According to Lenin, the insurgents must surround the Alexandrinsky
Theater, where the conference was being held, arrest the General Staff
and the Provisional Government, and send other units to fight the
Cadets and the Savage Division composed of North Caucasian horsemen.
He said such units must be ready to die but prevent the enemy from
reaching vital sectors in St. Petersburg, that armed workers must
be mobilized and persuaded to make a desperate final battle, to
immediately seize the telegraph office and the telephone station,
that the insurgents must set up their headquarters near the central
telephone station and communicate with all plants, regiments and
centers of armed struggle.
The majority of the Bolshevik faction (congress) rejected Lenin’s
idea. Nikolai Bukharin later recalled that everybody was shocked, and
that this was perhaps the only episode in the Party’s history when its
Central Committee unanimously issued an order to burn Lenin’s letter.
Fortunately, a surviving copy of that letter proves that Lenin
was ready to stage a coup against all Russian democratic forces in
September 1917.
Lev Trotsky later wrote that Lenin, who had encountered open
resistance, reached an agreement with Ivar Smilga, a Lithuanian
revolutionary and one of his staunchest supporters. At that time,
Smilga headed the Regional Committee of the Soviets in Finland,
where Lenin was hiding.
Together with the Latvian Bolshevik, Martin Lacis, Smilga insisted
during the abortive July 1917 coup that Petrograd railway stations,
arsenals, banks, the telegraph office, etc. be seized without delay.
Lenin knew that he could rely on both of them.
Lenin and Smilga tried to establish armed revolutionary units north of
Petrograd in circumvention of the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee
and to attack the Russian capital at the earliest opportunity.
Trotsky wrote that this was, in fact, a new plan of the uprising aiming
to establish a secret military committee in Gelsingfors (Helsinki)
and to use the Russian forces stationed in Finland.
Although this attempt also failed due to several factors, one can
say that Lenin had conspired against his own comrades. The Bolshevik
leader, who had missed the January 1905 and February 1917 revolutions,
who did not work in Switzerland and who thought he would not live to
see another revolution, was now seething with activity.
Unlike everybody else, Lenin was ready to stage a coup, no matter
what. And, if need be, he was ready to directly rely on the masses, who
seemed more radical than the Bolshevik Party and its Central Committee.
Trotsky’s account is quite believable because Lenin was usually several
steps ahead of his own Party and established undercover groups for
putting various plans into action. The Bolshevik Party and its Central
Committee knew nothing about a secret triumvirate comprising Lenin,
Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov, which was established during the
1905 revolution and organized terrorist attacks and bank robberies
for the revolutionary cause. The triumvirate also obtained money
in order to support the Bolshevik elite living in Paris and Zurich,
and conducted other financial swindles.
However, the Russian police knew all about these schemes. Police
General Alexander Spiridovich wrote that Lenin had inspired and
managed all of his Party’s paramilitary operations.
Lenin, who was not directly involved in any bank robbery, terrorist
attack or fraud, knew absolutely everything about them and even helped
mastermind such plans. Every operation usually involved Krasin, the
Party’s technical genius, who had established covert bomb laboratories
all over Russia, Joseph "Koba" Stalin and a brave Armenian named Simon
"Kamo" Ter-Petrosyan. As a rule, it was "Koba" and "Kamo" who robbed
the banks.
By addressing rank-and-file Bolsheviks and through clever intrigue,
Lenin eventually managed to persuade most Central Committee members,
who, nonetheless, tended to deviate from the new line at every
opportunity. For instance, the 120-strong Bolshevik faction was in
no mood to boycott the so-called Provisional Council of the Republic
(Predparlament). In fact, 70 Bolsheviks voted against the boycott,
which was supported by the remaining 50. However, Lenin and Trotsky
pressured the faction to walk out in protest.
That was Lenin’s major strategic victory because the Bolsheviks then
started preparing for an armed uprising. From then on, Lenin became
a real leader, rather than a leader of the opposition, and demanded
partisan discipline and the fulfilment of adopted decisions.
On October 10, only 12 members of the 21-strong Central Committee
officially decided to overthrow the Provisional Government. A
bespectacled and clean-shaven Lenin wearing a wig also attended the
meeting. Under the Party’s regulations, the Committee did not discuss
the quorum because it was hard to gather all its members who had gone
into hiding.
Few self-respecting parties would have made this crucial decision in
such a narrow circle. Moreover, only 10 out of the 12 Central Committee
members voted for the uprising and thus decided the country’s future.
The Central Committee concluded that the international and the military
situation around the Russian revolution was favorable for an armed
uprising. On the one hand, there was a mutiny in the German Navy as an
extreme manifestation of the approaching world socialist revolution in
Europe and the threat of the imperialist world to stifle the revolution
in Russia, and on the other, the obvious decision of the Russian
bourgeoisie and Kerensky & Co. to surrender Petrograd to the Germans,
the peasant uprising, the party’s growing popularity (elections in
Moscow) and obvious preparations for another Kornilov-style coup.
Lenin used a pencil stub to write this text on a piece of graph
paper. Trotsky later said Lenin invariably believed that an impending
world revolution was the most important pre-condition of a national
armed uprising, which, in turn, was just part of the entire sequence.
According to Trotsky, Lenin invariably stuck to this concept.
In short, Russian national interests were not the main argument in
favor of an uprising.
However, all of the arguments set out in the resolution are absolutely
unconvincing. The so-called imperialist world had no intention of
stifling the Russian revolution and restoring the monarchy. The United
States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy wanted Russia to fight,
while Germany, Austria and Turkey were dreaming of a separate peace
with Petrograd.
Lenin was bluffing when he claimed that the Russian bourgeoisie and
Kerensky obviously wanted to surrender Petrograd to the Germans. The
same can be said of allegations that the Bolshevik leader was a
German spy. Russian politicians of that period frequently accused
each other of kowtowing to the Kaiser. Rebel General Lavr Kornilov
even said that the Provisional Government was being pressured by the
Soviets and acted in line with the German General Staff’s plans.
A second Kornilov-style coup was not in the making because
Russian generals and officers were still disorganized after the
first rebellion. And Lenin himself was conspiring to overthrow the
Provisional Government. Trotsky remarked cynically that the attacker
always wants to prove that he is defending himself.
German sailors had rebelled because they did not like their food,
because they were bored and because they resented harsh discipline.
The warship where the mutiny started had been moored for almost a
year. Only a raving madman could think that this event heralded the
approaching world socialist revolution in Europe.
In fact, German sailors wanted frankfurters, sauerkraut, beer,
official leaves, and women, and were in no mood to carry out a world
revolution. Their mutiny was suppressed after October 1917.
Although the Central Committee resolution mentions peasant unrest as
a pretext for an immediate coup d’etat, this is a bit strange because
only a few months had passed since the February Revolution and the
war was going on at the time. Unlike the peasant-oriented Social
Revolutionaries, the pro-worker Bolsheviks were more concerned about
the plight of British dockers and German metal-workers.
The resolution contained the only truth: the Party had won elections
in Moscow, and underprivileged urban residents were beginning to
sympathize with the Bolsheviks. Lenin realized this, and wanted to
grab power while the pendulum was still swinging in his direction.
The Bolshevik leader wanted to stage a coup under any pretext that
would seem ridiculous to future historians.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not
necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
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