October': Myths and Realities
SOUVARINE, BORIS
'October': Myths and Realities By Boris Souvarine On November 7, 1917 (October 25 by the old Russian calendar), at 10 in the morning, the Military Revolutionary Committee headed by Leon Trotsky,...
...Thus a military committee, controlling the troops garrisoned at Petrograd, plus detachments of armed workers and "Red guards," seized power in the capital of Russia during the night of November 6-7...
...he said: "We owe it to ourselves lo do justice at once to the Ukrainians and the Finns, to insure them, as well as all the non-Russian nationalities inhabiting this country, their complete freedom, including the freedom of secession...
...Karelin, a Left Socialist Revolutionary, also protested: "Three weeks ago, the Bolsheviks demanded freedom of the press...
...We are certain, for example, that if the elections to the Constituent Assembly take place the majority of the peasants will vote for the Socialist Revolutionaries...
...We want to remake the world...
...to turn St...
...The Soviet Government will immediately propose a just peace to all the belligerent states and . . will in all probability obtain an immediate armistice followed by a swift peace...
...The disposition of the land, the fixing of local conditions of ownership and use, must be completely and exclusively determined not by the bureaucracy and the [Government] functionaries, but by the local and regional soviets of peasants' deputies...
...If we had not seized power in October," Trotsky acknowledged, "we would never have gotten it...
...White Russia, the Moslems, etc...
...On the eve of the coup d'etat, he still insists: "We who have dozens of newspapers, freedom of assembly, a majority in the soviets, we who are in the most privileged position in the world"—why should we wait any longer to seize power...
...Even if the peasants still follow the Socialist Revolutionaries, even if they give that party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we will say: So be it...
...Declaration by Trotsky: 'In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, I declare: The Provisional Government is no more [applause...
...quite the contrary, in fact...
...The Communists had promised in Lenin's words: "If the soviets take power, they will be able to insure the peaceful development of the Revolution, the peaceful election of their representatives by the people, peaceful competition of the parties within the soviets, testing of the various parties' programs, transfer of power from one party to another...
...Within the soviets, the parties' struggle for power can develop peacefully provided that these soviets are fully democratic...
...But they ran up against the unshakable will of Lenin and Trotsky, the two Party chiefs whose temperament imposed itself on the course of events and who took their own intuitions for science...
...Once in power, however, they delayed them, then in January 1918 forcibly dissolved the Assembly in which their fraction comprised merely an intolerant, boisterous minority: roughly a quarter of the deputies...
...But Lenin and Trotsky banked in vain on the world revolution...
...Their intransigence ultimately won out...
...The Bolsheviks had—in September —won a majority in the soviets of Petrograd, Moscow and other cities...
...The Bolshevik Government kept only one of its promises: to publish the secret treaties between the Tsarist Government and the Western Allies...
...Finally, on the agrarian question, Lenin had changed his program several times, ultimately formulating the main point as follows in 1917: "We must demand the nationalization of all the land, that is, its transfer with full property rights to the central regime...
...Before October, "only Lenin and Trotsky were for the insurrection," wrote John Reed in Ten Days That Shook the World, to which Lenin wrote a preface...
...Xone of the early foes of Communism even dimly imagined what the true face would be of the future society painted in such idealistic colors by the revolutionaries of October 1917...
...It is painful to recall Lenin's many promises in this regard, until the day when he finally repudiated them all: "The interests of socialism come before the right of peoples to determine their own fate...
...That afternoon, the Petrograd Soviet held an extraordinary session...
...What the Bolsheviks now call the "proletarian revolution' of October 1917 was an armed coup against :i defenseless government, led by a military committee on behalf of a minority party...
...Lenin saw no contradiction between giving power to the soviets and convening the Constituent Assembly...
...As a democratic government, we cannot evade the decision made by the masses, even if it does not accord with our opinions...
...and deferred a final solution until the Constituent Assembly convened...
...And Lenin backed Trotsky : "We declared in advance that we would suspend the bourgeois newspapers if we took power...
...That is what the Bolsheviks have repeated ad nauseam...
...In a "Letter on Tactics," Lenin asserts that "real power in Petrograd belongs to the workers and soldiers...
...Power has passed into the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee, organ of the Petrograd Soviet, which is at the head of the proletariat and the garrison of Petrograd...
...We are not Blanquists, favoring seizure of power by a minority...
...Instead, they created a monstrous police, militarism and bureaucracy and the most totalitarian state conceivable...
...TO FURTHER compare Bolshevik theory and practice, we must take a retrospective glance at the political views of Lenin and Trotsky, particularly Lenin's celebrated "April theses," which drew the line between his followers and the Socialist supporters of the democratic Provisional Government...
...The following month, however, he again changed his mind...
...Lunacharsky, citing the bombardment of cathedrals and of the Kremlin in Moscow, had already withdrawn from the Government...
...A new era is opening in the history of Russia," commented Lenin, stressing "the necessity of putting an immediate end to the war," then of "conquering capitalism itself...
...In a Letter to the Comrades, he rebuked Zinoviev and Kamenev: "Is it really so difficult to understand that if power is in the hands of the soviets the Constituent Assembly and its success are assured...
...Events proved them right...
...The Paris Commune adopted a most remarkable measure when it reduced the salary "of all officials to the level of a worker's wages...
...But at that time conditions were such that we demanded the minimum program...
...Stalin...
...But the soviets had been gradually losing their spontaneously representative character...
...After the middle of October, he urged his comrades to act without waiting for the Congress of Soviets scheduled for November 7, and particularly without waiting for the Constituent Assembly...
...In this sense, the state begins to wither away...
...Thereupon, this "revolution from above" was imposed on the peoples of the Empire, who unquestionably desired peace, and on the peasants, who unquestionably wanted the land, but neither of whom wanted either socialism or communism...
...The same day, November 17, Kamenev, Rykov, Milyutin, Zinoviev and Nogin resigned from the Party Central Committee, which had barred any compromise "on the question of forming a Soviet socialist government with the parties represented in the soviets...
...the new government uses no violence against them and cannot do so, for there is no police, no army separated from the nation, no all-powerful bureaucracy above the people...
...Moreover, there are 99 chances in 100 that the Germans will give us at least an armistice...
...Before Lenin could have his way, he had to win over even his most faithful colleagues...
...Others denounced the Bolsheviks for usurping the rule of the future Constituent Assembly...
...Those Bolsheviks who opposed them were forced to fall in line...
...Although the Bolsheviks were bent on wiping out any possibility of nonconformist expression, their party membership was not yet fully tamed...
...But in all this there was little trace of communism...
...this would be real freedom of the press for everyone, and not for the rich...
...of this departure from Party doctrine: "The victorious Bolsheviks copied word for word the Socialist Revolutionaries' electoral agrarian program...
...In order to keep themselves in power, they gradually lost all reason for existence, if their own doctrines are to serve as any standard...
...we should demand only that it not incite to revolt...
...Thus, Lenin renounced socialization of agriculture in order to conciliate the peasants...
...To tolerate the existence of these papers means ceasing to be socialist...
...V. D. Broiich-Bruyevich, a collaborator of Lenin, has written: "As soon as he arrived in Petrograd [in April], Lenin sat down at the editorial desk of Pravda...
...On some davs...
...In the evening of November 7, the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened, and the various non-Bolshevik socialist groups protested against the military coup...
...After October, they were also alone, or virtually so, in their resolve to wield undivided power...
...According to Lenin, everything had hung "by a hair...
...cries of "Long live the Military Revolutionary Committee...
...When Lenin presented his decree on peace to the 2nd Congress of Soviets, however, his language was more discreet: "Certainly we are going to defend by every possible means our program of peace without annexations or indemnities...
...Instead, they lost no time in requisitioning farm products and making an attempt at forced collectivization of agriculture which foreshadowed the horrors of Stalin's mass collectivization in the 1930s...
...Their statement deplored "a series of acts which prove clearly that [the controlling group of the Central Committee] has firmly decided not to tolerate the formation of a government of the soviet parties and that it wishes to defend at any price a purely Bolshevik government, without counting the victims in workers and soldiers that it might cost...
...The Communists had come out against the death penalty in the Army...
...in order to print millions of copies of newspapers and pamphlets for distribution among the politically inert peasant population...
...October': Myths and Realities By Boris Souvarine On November 7, 1917 (October 25 by the old Russian calendar), at 10 in the morning, the Military Revolutionary Committee headed by Leon Trotsky, an organ of the Petrograd Soviet (of which Trotsky was also chairman), announced in a proclamation: "The Provisional Government has been deposed...
...It will establish workers' control of production, will assure convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the date set, will guarantee to all the peoples which inhabit Russia the genuine right to determine their own fate...
...He even boasted, on another occasion...
...On November 11...
...The noisy, boisterous extreme Left was crowding out democratic socialists...
...The soviets, Lenin writes, "do not 'decree' . . , must not decree any reform which is not absolutely ripe both in terms of economic reality and in the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of the people...
...Now he preferred "All power to the working class led by the Bolshevik party...
...In all other respects, the Bolsheviks did the opposite of what they had pledged...
...on the contrary, their determination to fight "to the end" finally shattered German imperialism and saved the Soviet regime, which would not have survived a German victory...
...As he finished, he greeted Lenin, who, ending three months in hiding, had just entered the hall...
...The others will be in a few days or hours [applause...
...The convocation of the Constituent Assembly and the latter's effectiveness depend on the soviets' taking power...
...The Communists were pledged to grant the non-Russian nationalities the right to determine their own fate, even to secede from Russia if they wished...
...The "imperialists" were in no wise inclined to conclude a compromise peace in order to strangle the Russian Revolution...
...Without delay, Trotsky sent all interested foreign governments a "proposal of an armistice and a democratic peace without annexations or indemnities, on the basis of the right of peoples to determine their own fate...
...Julius Martov, in the name of the Social Democrats, introduced a resolution which stated: "The coup d'etat which has given all power in Petrograd to the Military Revolutionary Committee one day before the opening of the Congress [of Soviets] was organized by a single party by means of a military conspiracy...
...Can it be that the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik party could not rule Russia in the interest of the poor and against the rich...
...4) "the winning of a majority in the soviets by the party of the proletariat...
...Ryazanov, Derbyshev, Arbuzov, Yurenev, Fedorov and Larin subscribed to the statement and also resigned...
...The soviets had neither legal nor statutory existence...
...The 2nd Congress of Soviets, in its turn, issued a proclamation which stated: "The Soviet regime will propose an immediate democratic peace to all nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts...
...And Trotskv proclaims: "If there is a true dictatorship of revolutionary democracy, if it proposes an honorable peace and . this peace is rejected, I tell you in the name of our party and the proletarian masses who follow it that the armed workers of Petrograd and of all Russia will defend the land of the revolution against the armies of imperialism with a heroism never before seen in the history of Russia...
...But they found specious excuses for taking back their words, holding the threat of violence over any who protested...
...We believe," the statement went on, "that apart from this road there is but one other: maintenance of a purely Bolshevik government by means of political terror...
...The state would share the use of its facilities with any party or group of citizens that gathered a certain number of signatures...
...The following day's report in Izvestia began as follows: "The session opens at 2:35 in the afternoon...
...And the Allied "imperialists" never contemplated a separate peace with Germany at Russia's expense...
...And if Germany should not agree to this kind of peace...
...Alas, neither of these is the case...
...In The Bogey, he wrote: "Peaceful development of the Revolution would be possible and probable if all power were transferred to the soviets...
...What does it matter who drafted it...
...Next, the Party proved that it could in fact maintain itself in power by terror and without counting the victims...
...Eight days later, in the Executive Committee of the Soviets, Larin proposed abrogating Lenin's decree: "The measures adopted against the press could be explained while the struggle was still under way, but today they must no longer be applied...
...Similarly, Maxim Gorky declared: "The war gave power to the proletariat—gave it, because no one would say that the proletariat itself, by its own strength, took power into its hands...
...Since the middle of September, Lenin had made the insurrection the order of the day...
...The revolutionary garrison, which is at the disposal of the Military Revolutionary Committee, has dissolved the Pre-Parliament [lively applause...
...The Communists had noisily demanded speedy elections to the Constituent Assembly...
...At a time when his own party does not yet boast 100,000 members, Lenin already sees it destined for political hegemony: "The dictatorship (that is, a regime based not on law but on the direct power of the armed populace) consists of the Petrograd and other soviets...
...In an article, "Marxism and the Insurrection," Lenin gives his answer: "If our peace offer is rejected and we do not obtain even an armistice...
...Trotsky is alone at the presiding table...
...Voice in the hall: 'Bolshevik property!'] Yes...
...In his first speech after the seizure of power...
...The Communists had vowed to lake the Paris Commune as their model...
...At that time, the Military Revolutionary Committee controlled only a part of Petrograd and had not yet taken the Winter Palace, seat of the Government...
...2) "the threat of a peace among the imperialists with the aim of strangling the revolution in Russia...
...The Bolshevik radio declared: "The [2nd] Congress of Soviets sabotage the Constituent Assembly...
...which supported the domination of the bourgeoisie by means of the old monarchial instruments: the administration, the police, the army, the bureaucracy...
...Lenin continued to insist he was speaking in the name of "the proletariat.' He was nltimatelv fortunate in finding in Trotsky, after ten years of disagreement, an alter ego who could translate their jointly held ideas into action...
...So long as the soviets exists, so long as they hold power, there exists in Russia a state of the type of the Paris Commune...
...In those conditions, "the winning of a majority" had little real meaning...
...Each of these statements was false...
...he limited himself to confiscating the big estates, while leaving it to the local peasants' soviets to divide up the land, equipment and stock...
...Yet, even then, Lenin contradicts himself by conceding "the numerical insignificance of the Russian proletariat, its lack of consciousness and organization...
...He foresaw "the victorious revolution of the socialist proletariat throughout the world...
...Trotsky declared: "The first acts of the new regime must be: an immediate armistice on all fronts, transfer of the land to the peasants, the swiftest possible convocation of a truly democratic Constituent Assembly...
...the garrison in the capital preferred to follow the Bolsheviks rather than go to the front...
...soon by Nogin and others...
...Formation of a government of Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, responsible to the soviets...
...If the rebelling peoples of Europe do not crush imperialism, it is we who will be crushed—there is no doubt of it...
...Lenin directed other fine promises to the national minorities of Russia: "On the national question, the party of the proletariat will above all recommend proclaiming and immediately implementing the complete freedom, for all the nations and all the peoples oppressed by Tsarism, annexed or kept by force within the Russian state, to secede from that stale...
...did not agree with him...
...Lenin defends the necessity of the state—"only, in accordance with Marx and the experience of the Paris Commune, not the ordinary bourgeois parliamentary state, but a state without a standing army, without a police that is opposed to the people, without the body of officials placed above the people...
...I cannot go on," he wrote...
...The legend of the "proletarian revolution" and the mythology of "October" were developed later...
...In his pamphlet, Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, after his party has tripled its membership...
...His ideas were so novel that even his own comrades, who had worked with him for decades...
...We will submit all peace proposals for the decision of the Constituent Assembly," Lenin had said...
...And in The Tasks of the Revolution...
...Lenin was to go so far as to coolly state in his 1021 pamphlet...
...He goes on to say: "Blanquism is the seizure of power by a minority, while the soviets are from all evidence the direct and immediate organ of the majority of the people...
...At the 2nd Congress of Soviets, there was evidently some criticism of Lenin's land decree, since he was forced to say: "Voices are heard saying that this decree and this mandate were drafted by the Socialist Revolutionaries...
...In all questions to which the Bolsheviks claimed to offer an original solution, they were forced to act contrary to their earlier stand...
...Thus, there were men among Lenin's disciples at that time who realized that an exclusively Bolshevik government could endure only by "political terror" and "without counting the victims...
...Otherwise, they would not be our tribunals, but God knows what...
...On Taxes in Kind: "The place for ¦Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries...
...Kalinin and Tom-sky...
...Instead, all the parties, all the programs and even all opposition within the Bolshevik party were soon suppressed...
...The Soviet Executive Committee approved the regime's arbitrary measures...
...Lenin buttresses further, with copious quotations from Marx and Engels...
...The salary of all officials, [who are to be] elected and subject to recall at all times, not to exceed the average wage of a good worker...
...Lenin and Zinoviev, who had been in hiding since July, had emerged to take part in the meeting...
...The Council of People's Commissars has taken the latter road...
...The Communists had promised the land to the peasants, disavowed general expropriation, and "borrowed" the Socialist Revolutionaries' plan for confiscating the great landed estates for the benefit of the poor peasants...
...Trotsky has long since said that an alliance is impossible...
...the ignorant masses were readily seduced by unrealizable promises...
...130,000 nobles administered Russia by using constant violence against 150 million people...
...In reality, the mutinies in the German Fleet indicated weariness and opposition to continuing the war, not a desire for world socialist revolution...
...Gorky's Novaya Zhizn reported on November 18: "Voting in the minority were the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and, from the Bolshevik fraction, Ryazanov and Lozovsky...
...Thus, in the early days of the Revolution, Stalin and Bukharin paid homage to the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, once famous but now forgotten, and also gave Trotsky his due...
...After the defeat of the July uprising, however, Lenin changed his mind and abandoned the slogan, "All power to the soviets...
...we will . put ourselves at the head of the military parties, we will wage war in a truly revolutionary manner...
...And again: "Convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the date set, with no delay or even at an earlier date...
...You say that we demanded freedom of the press for Pravda...
...Following the meeting of the Executive Committee which approved the measures against freedom of the press, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had decided to withdraw their representatives from all the organs of Soviet rule, remaining on the Executive Committee only as observers...
...How did he then view the political scene...
...The parasite state" must be destroyed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents a transition toward the complete abolition of the state...
...This regime is of the same type as the Paris Commune of 1371...
...they are completely bankrupt because they are dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary and Men-shevik parties...
...When the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets met after the coup, the Central Executive Committee declared that it "regards the 2nd Congress as null and void, considers it a private meeting of Bolshevik delegates, and deems its decisions illegal and not binding...
...Well, what of it...
...Russia is today the freest country in the world," Lenin states in the theses...
...protesting against the Bolshevik Central Committee decision on the insurrection, they wrote: "It is said that (11 we have won over the majority of the people in Russia, (2) the majority of the international proletariat is for us...
...Action aimed at struggling for influence within these soviets cannot, can in no ease turn off into the quagmire of Blanquism...
...Lenin's November 10 decree on the press, confirming the Military Revolutionary Committee's suppression of opposition papers guilty of "poisoning" the minds and "disturbing the conscience of the masses," nevertheless stipulated: "As soon as the new order is consolidated, all administrative pressure on the press will cease, and complete freedom of the press will be established within the framework of responsibility before the law, in accordance with the broadest and most progressive legislation...
...At the end of August, his magazine demanded abolition of the death penalty, publication of the secret treaties, and convocation of the Constituent Assembly...
...It was simple enough to demand an armistice and an "honorable" peace, but it proved impossible to obtain anything from the Germans but an ultimatum and unacceptable peace terms...
...In the last issues of his paper, which was soon banned like the rest of the non-Bolshevik press, Gorky did not spare Russia's new masters: "Lenin and his associates feel they can commit any crime...
...The following year...
...The Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Turkestan, which had enjoyed relative freedom under the Tsar and had hoped for more from the Revolution, successively lost all chance of autonomy, to say nothing of independence...
...to apply the same principles to all of Armenia, to pledge its evacuation as well as that of the Turkish territories which we are occupying, etc...
...Lenin writes with increased assurance: "After the Revolution of 1905...
...this is an old Bolshevik truism...
...Zinoviev and Kamenev were not deceived by the fake majorities...
...But he also anticipates the worst: "If the least probable contingency comes to pass, that is, if none of the belligerents accept even an armistice, war will truly have been forced upon us and it will be for us a truly just, defensive war...
...Kamenev announced that, "in conformity with the will of the Congress, its bureau has ordered abolition of the death penalty in the Army...
...SOON AFTER his arrival in Petrograd in April 1917, Lenin leveled charges at the Provisional Government: "It is already creating all sorts of obstacles...
...The Congress of Soviets of the North proclaimed in a resolution: "The Soviet Government will convoke the Constituent Assembly on the date set...
...Lenin regards a German rejection as unlikely: "For a truly revolutionary war Russia still has vast material and moral resources...
...Since 1918, no other regime in any country has murdered so many political opponents, with no legal safeguards and on the most arbitrary pretexts...
...During a conference of the Petrograd Party organization, Lenin declared flatly: "As for an understanding [of Socialist parties], I cannot even speak of it seriously...
...The Communists had pledged to abolish the police, standing army and bureaucracy with a view to the ultimate withering away and extinction of the state...
...Following the example of Ryazanov and Lozovsky, a group of prominent "Leninists" made a last attempt to resist the trend to dictatorship...
...In the end, Lenin signed what he himself called a "shameful" and "infamous" peace...
...But they re-established it soon after abolishing it and then extended it to civilians as well...
...Explaining their resignation, No-gin, Rykov, Milyutin and Theodoro-vich published a statement on "the need to form a socialist government of all the soviet parties...
...Trotsky was equally convinced: "We base all our hopes on the prospect that our revolution will unleash the European revolution...
...Thus, he wrote: "The flames of revolution spread only because of the ignorance and terrible sufferings of Russia, because of all the conditions created by the war...
...He predicted that the Revolution "will lead the proletariat to world revolution" and urged "starting at once to build a socialist proletarian state," concluding with "Long live the world socialist revolution...
...We want to end the world imperialist war...
...At the center of this work of mobilization," wrote Bukharin, "was the Petrograd Soviet, which had tumultuously elected Trotsky, the most brilliant tribune of the proletarian uprising, as its chairman...
...The reports of the sessions mention repeated challenges of the credentials of any speaker who chanced to displease some enthusiastic faction...
...Such were Lenin's doctrinal ideas which we must compare with subsequent Soviet realities...
...in any case, both the Bolsheviks and their opponents had been "elected" in an indescribably haphazard, arbitrary manner...
...He who sa\s...
...Thus, we are already in possession of a 'state apparatus' of a million people whose devotion to the socialist state is based on motives of a moral nature...
...Lenin once more adopted his old slogan: "All power to the soviets...
...The decree authorized the Soviet Government to "begin negotiations at once on a just and democratic peace...
...the essential thing was not loyalty to principles but the conquest and maintenance of power...
...At the head of the Petrograd Soviet and the Military Revolutionary Committee, Trotsky had put into execution a decision taken on October 23 by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party...
...Not long after, he repeats in a pamphlet: "There is no country in the world today as free as Russia...
...However, "in order to become the [state] power, the politically conscious workers must win a majority...
...their members were elected more or less regularly by a show of hands by an uncertain number of voters, and no one could check the mandates...
...All groups can make use of the paper and print-shops, all soldiers and peasants...
...He described the Bolsheviks as "blind fanatics, conscienceless adventurers" and Bolshevism as "a national calamity.'' He also denounced "the emptiness of Lenin's promises" and called the Soviet Government an "autocracy of savages...
...By a vote of 10 to 2, the Central Committee decided to prepare for "armed insurrection...
...Lenin and Trotsky proved that, in a unique conjunction of circumstances and at a certain moment in history, the Bolshevik party was able to seize power...
...Terror, at first a temporary expedient, became a permanent system after words like these...
...As Stalin wrote some months afterward: "All the work of practical organization of the uprising was carried out under the direct leadership of Trotsky, chairman of the Petro-grad Soviet...
...When the belligerents rejected the offer, Lenin forecast world revolution: "No force on earth can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not yield to fear, from seizing power and maintaining it until the triumph of the world socialist revolution...
...We will refer it to the Constituent Assembly, which will have the power to decide definitely what conditions are acceptable and on what we cannot yield...
...Now we want the maximum...
...A slander...
...By constantly stressing "the horrors of war," Lenin was able to make masterly use of exceptionally favorable circumstances: The peasant soldiers no longer wished to fight and longed to divide up the land...
...two of Lenin's closest associates...
...unless one employs violence against the people, there is no other way...
...Virtuallv alone in his stand, opposed first In Kamenev...
...It can be said with certainty that, as regards the garrison's rapid going-over to the Soviet and the skilful organization of the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee, the Party is above all indebted to Comrade Trotsky...
...To the authority of the Government, Lenin counterposes "the revolutionary dictatorship, that is, a regime based directly on revolutionary seizure [of power], on direct initiative from below, by the people, and not on a law promulgated by a centralized governmental authority...
...Lenin insists that the experience of the Paris Commune "has absolutely excluded Blanquism, absolutely guaranteed the pure and simple, direct and unconditional domination of the majority...
...our agrarian program is taken from the peasants...
...Liberate the bourgeois newspapers docs not understand that we are moving at full speed toward socialism...
...3) "the obvious intention of the Russian bourgeoisie and of Kerensky & Co...
...And Trotsky had declared: "The country can be saved only by a constituent assembly...
...The press must be free...
...Lenin held that "only" the proletariat would insure "the immediate and complete restoration of their freedom to Finland, the Ukraine...
...To the Leninists, "the working class is what ore is to the metallurgist.' Before finally falling in line with the "Lenin-Trotsky despotism" out of sheer resignation, Gorky fearlessly attacked this government which "treats the Russian worker like kindling wood: It lights the wood to see if the European revolution can be kindled in the Russian hearth...
...The date for convening the Constituent Assembly has not even been set...
...Thereupon, several members of the Council of People's Commissars and of the Bolshevik Central Committee also resigned...
...And obtaining an armistice now means defeating the entire world...
...How...
...In his more candid moments, Lenin had no illusions about what had made the Revolution possible...
...In State and Revolution...
...Lenin recommends: "Abolition of the police, the Army, the bureaucracy...
...Lenin even went so far as to write an article entitled, "How to Insure the Success of the Constituent Assembly" (September 28, 1917...
...As regards the immediate problems of the day, Lenin's solutions left nothing to desire in categorical simplicity...
...The two negative votes were cast by Zinoviev and Kamenev...
...he threatened Socialists who criticized his New Economic Policy : " The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries who preach all that are astonished when we say that for such things we will shoot them...
...In ff ill the Bolsheviks Retain State Power...
...But after encouraging separatism, the regime ultimately used the Red Army to keep the subject peoples from breaking away...
...The Bolshevik party embraced the demand for a Constituent Assembly at the same time that it demanded power for the soviets...
...Kerensky clearly had no designs of the sort attributed to him by Lenin and Trotsky...
...In a word, he promoted the soviets when he thought he could gain a majority in them, but lost interest when the majority went against him...
...Either the Russian Revolution will stir up a whirlwind in the West, or the capitalists of the world will strangle the Revolution.' In The Bogey of Civil War, Lenin repeated: "The growth and the irresistibility of the world socialist revolution are beyond all doubt...
...In it, recalling his previous statements, he advocated requisitioning the print-shops and stocks of paper, and establishing a state monopoly of advertising...
...Only" the proletariat in power can put an end to "the horrors of, war," maintains Lenin...
...He trusts only the soviets, without which "convocation of the Constituent Assembly is anything but assured and its success is impossible...
...besides, the Bolshevik majority represented sentiment for peace rather than communism...
...All this is obvious...
...Shlyapnikov joined them, but without resigning...
...his argument ml the need to abolish the police, the arm) and the bureaucracy: "Once the majority of the people itself is repressing its oppressors, there is no longer any need for a special force of repression...
...Petersburg over to the Germans...
...He also favors replacing the standing army by a people's militia and establishing a new type of state "modeled on the Paris Commune...
...And he went on: "Our tribunals must shoot those who publicly act as Mensheviks...
...The Congress of Soviets will assure convocation of the Constituent Assembly and an immediate offer of peace...
...Over and over, Lenin and Trotsky define this peace as "honorable," without annexations or indemnities...
...Lenin admitted in a speech to representatives of the garrison: "We are not carrying out the Bolshevik program...
...The Military Revolutionary Committee had made its preparations in the full view of everyone without encountering any obstacles...
...When the Congress of Soviets of the North convened two weeks before the Bolshevik coup, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, which was not yet Bolshevized and had been elected in a relatively orderly fashion, denounced it as "summoned in disregard of all rules ..., a meeting of delegates chosen haphazardly and arbitrarily...
...We neither can nor wish to follow it...
...Trotsky understood this, and, since then, there has been no better Bolshevik...
...our aim is to make it social property...
...Most Bolsheviks had tended to support the Provisional Government at the beginning of the Revolution, then favored a coalition with the other socialist parties...
...For him...
...But that is all it proved...
...whether open or concealed, is in jail...
...The Central Committee of the Party had cited four arguments to support its resolution calling for an armed uprising: (1) "the revolt in the German Fleet, a powerful expression of the rise of the world socialist revolution throughout Europe...
...He utterly repudiates "ordinary democracy...
...What is at issue is not the soviets in general but the present soviets," he stressed...
...Their arguments now recall the viewpoint of the Union of the Russian People [the famous reactionary 'Black Hundreds'] and the censors of the Tsarist regime— even in style, for the latter also spoke of poisoning the people...
...The present soviets have collapsed...
...These 240.000 already have al least a million sympathizers...
...On the fourth point, some explanation is necessary...
...Trotsky replied: "We must confiscate the print-shops and stocks of paper and declare them social property...
...then by Xinoviev and Kamenev...
...the atmosphere became extremely heated...
...After this, Lenin won adoption of his decrees on peace and the land question, which was all the easier since most of his Socialist opponents had left the hall...
...Some of the ministers have been arrested [cries of "Bravo...
...The question of reaching an agreement among all Socialist parties on an interim coalition government, until the Constituent Assembly met, had been debated constantly in the Party despite the firm opposition of Lenin and Trotsky, who had only contempt for the "conciliators...
...Immediately after the Revolution, Maxim Gorky, who had once been so close a friend of Lenin's, expressed his indignation: "Lenin, Trotsky and their sympathizers have already been poisoned by power, as demonstrated by their shameful attitude toward freedom of speech, of the individual, and that set of rights for whose triumph the democratic forces fought...
Vol. 40 • November 1957 • No. 44
