The October
Russian Revolution, which actually took place on 6th and 7th
November 1917 (the discrepancy was brought about by differences between the
Julian and Gregorian calendars), had causes that went back many years and many
events can be cited as contributory factors.
However, in
order to distinguish between what characterised the October Revolution and that
of March 1917 that overthrew the Tsar, one needs to go back to 1903 and the
Second Congress of the Social-Democratic Party that was held in London because
such a meeting on Russian soil would have been impossible.
Who should
lead the peasantry?
At that
meeting there was a fundamental disagreement about the means that should be
used to bring about a revolution in Russia. It was agreed that the revolution
must involve both the workers in the factories and the peasants on the farms,
but who should be responsible for leading the peasantry, as they did not have
the degree of organisation that was being built among the factory workers?
The choice
lay between the workers and the bourgeoisie (i.e. the middle classes). One view
was that the workers did not have the education or influence to lead the
peasantry, which did not have the political will to move forward to Socialism given
that its main interest was in getting control of the land. The bourgeoisie was
therefore the class that should lead the peasantry into overthrowing the Tsar
and creating a provisional government that would be largely capitalist in
nature, with Socialism waiting until conditions were more conducive for its
emergence.
The other
view was that the bourgeoisie was, at heart, counter-revolutionary and not suited
to leading the peasantry. The workers had become imbued with Marxism and were
aware of their role in changing society. The bourgeoisie was not driven by this
philosophy and was therefore not intellectually minded to lead the Revolution.
The Revolution, when it came, must be a working-class one with no input from
the bourgeosie.
At the 1903
Congress the majority of delegates took the latter view and were therefore
dubbed the “Bolsheviks” from the Russian “bolshinstvo” meaning “majority”. The
minority became known as the “Mensheviks”, from “menshinstvo” (minority). The
Bolsheviks were led by Lenin and the Mensheviks, who included Trotsky, by
Martov.
One long-term
consequence of this split was that the Bolsheviks concentrated their efforts on
party organisation at the factory level, with the middle classes being largely
excluded from the underground groups that were being formed in all the large
factories and which would develop into the “soviets” (delegates from all the
factories in a city) that became the driving force of the October Revolution.
The
Mensheviks continued to seek to appeal to middle-class intellectuals and to
inculcate a liberal spirit that would be acceptable both to workers and
capitalists.
The first two
Revolutions
There were
three Russian Revolutions. The first, in 1905, was put down with great
brutality by the Tsar’s troops, although it had never threatened to use
physical force except in a few localities.
The
Revolution of March 1917 (known as the February Revolution for the reason given
above) occurred under very different circumstances, with Russia being nearly three
years into a war against Germany that was taking a very heavy toll not only of
lives but in terms of economic chaos. A wave of strikes and demonstrations led
to workers disarming the police and finding increased support among the
soldiers who were sent against them. A Provisional Committee of the Duma, which
was a Parliament of sorts but with very limited powers and consisting almost
entirely of members of the bourgeoisie, declared itself to be the new authority
in the country.
In support of
the Duma, a new soviet was created in Petrograd (as St Petersburg had been called since 1914)
that consisted of deputies from factories both large and small and also from
every unit of the armed forces. This adopted the title of the Council of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and was largely a creation of the Mensheviks.
The
Bolsheviks had been outsmarted by the February Revolution. One of their
problems was that their organisations in the factories were illegal and many activists
had been arrested and sent into exile. The Mensheviks, on the other hand, had
managed to avoid over-stepping the mark and their organisations were still
largely intact. The February Revolution, which forced the Tsar to abdicate, was
therefore the Menshevik Revolution.
The
Provisional Government that ruled Russia between the two 1917
revolutions was led by Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer and the only Socialist
member of the Duma Committee. However, the new government was very much a
middle-class one and the prospect for the workers and peasants was that they
would only have a limited role in determining the future direction of the
country.
The rise of
the Bolsheviks
That was not
what Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted. Lenin had not even been in the country at
the time of the February Revolution but in exile in Switzerland . When he returned to
Russia, in a sealed train as it crossed Germany, he declared in his “April
theses” his demand for “all power to the soviets” because he did not envisage
the Provisional Government giving way to working-class government any time
soon.
Lenin had a
point. Actions by the Provisional Government during the summer of 1917 included
opposing any transfer of land to the peasants and support for factory owners in
resisting takeovers by workers’ committees. When a massive demonstration by
workers and soldiers, in July, called for the government to be overthrown, the
policy of the government, supported by the Mensheviks, was for the Bolsheviks
to be suppressed by force.
However, in
order to do this the Provisional Government had to call upon the forces of the
old regime that had formerly supported the Tsar, namely officers from the elite
army regiments and the police, led by an old-style general named Kornilov. It
soon became clear that, if this force were to prevail, the result would be a
swing back to what had existed before the February Revolution and thus the
restoration of the Tsar. This was not something that many people outside the
ruling class wanted to happen and so allegiances began to switch back once
again.
The
Bolsheviks now picked up support in soviets across the country, becoming the
majority in more than 200 as well as the soldiers’ soviets of the front-line
armies. The war was so unpopular that the soldiers refused to support the
Provisional Government any longer, and without that support it was impossible
for it to continue.
The point of
no return
At midday on
6th November the military committee of the Petrograd soviet
instructed the armed workers’ guards in the factories, units of the Petrograd
garrison, and sailors in the Baltic fleet, to seize the key points in the city
as a preliminary to marching on the Winter Palace and arresting the Provisional
Government.
The
industrial working class of Russia ,
led by the Bolsheviks, had therefore brought to a conclusion a long process of
overthrowing Tsardom and setting free the creative forces of the Russian
people. Once the Bolshevik Revolution had succeeded there was no way by which
the process could be reversed.
© John
Welford
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