BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
Lenin as revolutionary, 1920. Source: bpk, Berlin / Art Resource, NY.
Shortly before midnight on April 3, 1917, Vladimir I. Lenin got off the train at the Finland station in Petrograd. Just returned from Swiss exile, the little-known revolutionary issued a stirring call for a “worldwide socialist revolution.” The next day Lenin elaborated his radical ideas in ten “April theses,” published in the Bolshevik paper Pravda. Repudiating further support of the war, he called for a break with the Provisional Government so as to proceed to “the second stage of the revolution, which must put power into the hands of the proletariat and the poorest stratum of the peasantry.” Since Lenin was aware that his cadre party was a small minority within the broad revolutionary movement, he urged propaganda to “enlighten the masses” that the Bolsheviks were the only group truly representing their interests.1 With the instinct of a gifted politician, he promised abolition of the hated police, military service, and bureaucracy; nationalization of the land; and control of industrial production by the workers. To galvanize a confused Left, this improvised program justified a second, more radical revolution.
Repeated and amplified in countless articles and speeches, Lenin’s vision was so appealing because it fundamentally revised Marxist theory by promising to realize the dream of a classless society immediately. Instead of waiting until bourgeois capitalism was fully developed, this situational rethinking seized upon the anarchy following the collapse of tsarism by refusing to cooperate with a liberal middle class of entrepreneurs and professionals and sought rather to put power into the hands of the long-suffering masses of soldiers, workers, and peasants, which would be represented in their grassroots councils, the soviets. Freed of the historical determinism of Marx and Engels, daring revolutionaries like Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin could now attempt to break the weakest link in the imperialist chain by exploiting the contradictions of a still-rural but rapidly developing country like Russia. Clothed in heroic narratives from John Reed’s and Leon Trotsky’s memoirs to Sergei Eisenstein’s films, this voluntaristic revision of structural theory acquired mythical proportions, inspiring many imitators around the globe in the decades to come.2
Begun with high hopes, this revolutionary form of Marxist modernization demanded an enormous effort that exacted an immense price of human suffering. Bypassing an entire stage of liberal capitalism required much compulsion and violence that contradicted its emancipatory intent. Neither the remnants of tsarist autocracy nor the bourgeois reformers would voluntarily give up their claims to power. The largely illiterate peasantry and the still semirural factory workers would have to be convinced that even when their immediate needs were satisfied, they should support a Marxist project of emancipatory egalitarianism that required a fundamental reshaping of Russian society. No doubt a growing number of Bolshevik Party members would enjoy wielding revolutionary power, while the radical intelligentsia could engage in a social experiment of unprecedented scope. But bypassing the incipient development toward a western-style capitalism and democracy meant that the minority of professional revolutionaries had to force their theoretical vision on a reluctant populace unprepared for such drastic change.3
During the past century, evaluations of the Russian Revolution have come full circle, largely discrediting its supporters and justifying its critics. During the heyday of the Soviet Union, celebrating the “Great October Revolution” was a patriotic ritual of praising a cast of superhuman heroes, led by Lenin. This was the founding myth upon which the communist claims of legitimacy rested, since it had made industrialization and victory in the Second World War possible. But already by then, skeptics pointed to the erasure of the Old Bolsheviks from photographs and to the promotion of Joseph Stalin in official accounts. In the West opinion was always split along ideological lines, with anticommunists, supported by émigrés and some anti-Stalinist radicals, emphasizing the repressive aspects of the regime, while many liberals were willing to concede that the Bolsheviks had, indeed, modernized the country, albeit by force.4 More recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union has reopened the original question of whether communism was a necessary step forward or a regrettable detour, preventing a more benign development.
Shorn of their partisan posturing, the Russian revolutions were largely a struggle between competing blueprints of modernization. While Slavophiles wanted to retain the old rural order, even the tsarist autocracy realized that industrial production, social reform, and political representation had to be imported from the West to make the country competitive. However the suffering of the Great War exposed the incompleteness of this transition, creating widespread popular discontent. The February Revolution opened a path to a liberal modernity though the Provisional Government, but the ineptness of its leaders, which kept Russia in the war, discredited their effort at constitution building. Hence the paradoxical October Revolution was in part a Bolshevik military coup that inaugurated a developmental dictatorship and in part a genuine effort to empower the oppressed. Only the failure of authoritarian transformation from above and of liberal development by the middle class gave the Bolsheviks the chance to pursue their own dictatorial modernization from below.5
BELATED WESTERNIZATION
At the dawn of the twentieth century foreign travelers and domestic critics considered Russia the most backward of the five great powers in Europe. Even Karl Marx was skeptical of the prospect of revolution in an underdeveloped society, revising his opinion only toward the end of his life. Many indicators, indeed, supported such a bleak view. The vast country was governed by an autocratic monarch, called the tsar, supported by a cumbersome bureaucracy, huge army, and ruthless secret police. The leading stratum was the aristocracy, oriented toward the imperial court and living on the proceeds of its estates. Most of the population still resided in peasant villages, either working for the nobility or holding its property communally in the famous mirs. Religious life was dominated by the Orthodox Church, a staunch supporter of the traditional hierarchy. In teeming cities, the poor, illiterate masses struggled from day to day just to survive somehow in their tenements.6 And yet such stereotypes of backwardness missed the increasing signs of a rapid development that was about to awake this slumbering giant.
Ironically the initial impetus came from the monarchy itself, which embarked on a “modernization from above” in order to make Russia competitive with the West. Defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 suggested that fundamental changes were necessary to restore its military power. In 1861 Tsar Alexander II therefore liberated twenty-three million serfs from their personal bondage, transferring their feudal obligations into monetary compensation so as to spark agricultural development. Three years later he created local bodies of self-government called zemstvos, which were composed of nobles, townsmen, and peasants, and were supposed to work on the improvement of education, medical service, transport, and agronomy. In 1874 he also introduced universal military conscription as a prerequisite for citizenship. Such promising reforms were, however, abruptly ended when terrorists of the “People’s Will” assassinated him in 1881, unleashing a wave of repression that stalled further liberalization for another generation.7 Fearing revolt, his son Alexander III and grandson Nicholas II were determined not to make additional concessions.
As a result, the push for reform shifted to economic development, in which Russia made great strides during the following decades. For instance the minister of finance, Count Sergei Witte, advocated the rapid industrialization of the country and started the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad so as to connect European and Asian Russia. Under his auspices, numerous large factories were built, importing the newest production methods in heavy industry, machine building, and textiles from Western Europe. With an average annual growth rate of about 5 percent Russia was quickly becoming the fourth-largest industrial power in Europe.8 Another economic reformer, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, pushed for the commercialization of agriculture by dissolving the communal tenure of obshchina in order to make peasants individual proprietors looking out for their own gain rather than for the common good. His reforms included the establishment of large farms, the creation of agricultural cooperatives, the propagation of land improvement, and the offering of credit. These measures unleashed a surprising dynamism that put Russia on the road to catching up with the West.
This economic development created enormous social strains by forcing a rapid transition from a late feudal to an emerging capitalist system. Industrialization allowed great fortunes to be made, with which the newly rich bourgeoisie could rival the ruling aristocracy in display by constructing fashionable city palaces. The expansion of the bureaucracy and the work of the zemstvos led to the emergence of a stratum of university-trained professionals, who claimed a larger voice in addressing public concerns. Since not all graduates found appropriate jobs, the growth of education and the proliferation of print produced a critical intelligentsia that insisted on more radical changes. The commodification of agriculture created successful peasant proprietors, while pushing less-adept competitors off the land into the cities to seek their fortune. The building of large factories also necessitated the collection of a new labor force of about two million workers, which produced an incipient industrial proletariat.9 Each of these groups had its own vision of Russia’s future, which unfortunately clashed with the scenarios of the others.
Such societal tensions inspired a fierce intellectual debate about Russia’s identity as an independent alternative to, or a potential member of, Europe. On the one hand, defenders of religious orthodoxy promoted the theory of a Third Rome, arguing that Moscow was the successor to Constantinople. Successive movements of Slavophiles, Pan-Slavs, and Neo-Slavs believed in a special Russian mission to unite all Slavic brethren in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. These antiwestern groups extolled the glory of the Romanov dynasty, the holiness of the Orthodox Church, and the superiority of the Russian way of life. On the other hand, numerous reformers from Peter the Great on sought to overcome local ignorance and poverty as quickly as possible by importing ideas, styles, and practices from the West. Unfortunately, these westernizers were in turn divided between evolutionary professionals who looked for liberal models of capitalist democracy and radicals who favored a more revolutionary break with the past. Since these blueprints were incompatible, it was not at all clear which of these roads Russia would follow.10
Marxism came late to Russia since it had to displace other rivals and the industrial proletariat still remained small. Only after the failures of the tradition of sporadic peasant revolt, the populist project of “going to the people,” and the anarchist preference for terrorism could socialist alternatives gain a foothold. In 1883 the Marxist theoretician Georgy V. Plekhanov, in Swiss exile, succeed in founding a group “for the liberation of labor.” When socialist ideas had spread in the intelligentsia, a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party constituted itself in 1889 and joined the Second International. After the turn of the century this radical group split into a moderate wing, led by Julius Martov, which wanted to create an open, democratic workers’ party that could play a major role in advancing social reform. The more hard-line faction instead followed Lenin’s idea of a cadre party of dedicated professional revolutionaries as the only means to overthrow tsarist repression. When during the 1903 Party Congress the radicals were in the majority, they called themselves Bolsheviks in contrast to the Menshevik moderates.11
Tensions exploded in the 1905 revolution, which provided a dress rehearsal for the overthrow of tsarist autocracy. News of defeats in the Russo-Japanese War such as the fall of Port Arthur and the loss of the naval battle of Tshushima brought public agitation to a fever pitch. When the priest Georgy Gapon led a throng of protesters to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, troops opened fire, killing hundreds of demonstrators. This “Bloody Sunday” sparked a wildfire of rural revolts, the burning of about three thousand noble manors, and inspired a series of strikes in urban areas. The revolt was led by the populist Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), who invented a new institution—revolutionary councils, called soviets, in which orthodox Marxists also participated. The government responded by resorting to military force and succeeded in restoring order. But pressure from Count Witte and the public also compelled the tsar to issue an October Manifesto, creating the State Duma as the first nationwide parliament for Russia.12 This concession did not diminish his ultimate power, but it provided an advisory body to discuss policy that could not be ignored.
During the last prewar years three modernization programs, representing the major divisions of Russian society, vied with each other for leadership of opinion. Supporters of autocracy, such as the aristocracy, the bureaucracy, the army, and the church, sought a nativist path of partial change that would enhance their country’s military power without upsetting its traditional social hierarchy. With the establishment of the Duma, the rising entrepreneurs, professionals, and some reformist nobles propagated a constitutional route of enhancing economic development, strengthening the rule of law, and sharing power with the crown. In contrast to the beleaguered autocrats, most of the newly licensed parties felt optimistic about further progress toward a liberal system.13 Finally, the exploited masses of landless laborers, industrial workers, and urban poor hoped for a revolutionary uprising that would sweep away their oppressive lords and allow them a better life. While the rural populists (SRs) called for the distribution of the land, the Mensheviks proposed social reform and the Bolsheviks propagated a real revolution.
THE IMPACT OF WAR
Contrary to patriotic expectations, the First World War had a devastating effect on Russia, ultimately toppling the tsarist system. Since Great Russian nationalists of all social classes greeted the outbreak with bursts of national fervor, the conservative government thought participation in it would strengthen the unity of the country. But despite some victories against the Austrians, the succession of defeats at the hands of the German army had precisely the opposite effect of disillusioning the people with the performance of the constitutional autocracy. Supporters of the monarchy were upset about the ineptness of the tsar and the rapidly changing cabinets; liberal members of the Duma were angry about the disorganization of the bureaucracy, which hampered the fighting; and the laboring masses in the fields and factories were appalled by the deterioration of their own living conditions. Once initial supplies were exhausted and troops decimated, the war exposed the incomplete modernity of tsarist society.14 Instead of uniting Russians against a foreign enemy, the struggle sharpened their internal divisions.
What looked like a promising war effort at the beginning began to fall apart when the struggle continued for several years. Since the Russians had spent more on the military than the Germans, their store of weapons, including artillery, was impressive, and their mobilization plans were surprisingly effective. Almost fifteen million peasants and workers were drafted into the army, led by bourgeois officers and directed by noble generals. But when the stockpiles were used up, the troops dead or captured, and the officer corps thinned out, the tsarist state was unable to replace the losses efficiently enough. Though taxes were raised, the conversion to a war economy led to rampant inflation. Because of the drafting of farm laborers as well as the requisitioning of horses, the production of food declined drastically, eventually requiring rationing. While the large factories produced enough rifles and shells, the transportation system was unable to get them to the front in time, hampering offensives at crucial moments. Though Russia had ample manpower, it failed to organize sufficient supplies, making it incapable of sustaining a lengthy war of attrition.15
Successive defeats created confusion among the military leadership and undercut the morale of frontline soldiers. While the tsarist army was able to defeat the Habsburg military in the fall of 1914 and in 1916, it continued to lose against the Germans, gradually retreating from Poland and the Baltic states. The civil-society effort by a national zemstvo committee to increase weapons production and speed distribution to the front consumed vital civilian resources and exposed administrative incompetence. Rumors spread that Russian soldiers lacked rifles and were told to pick them up from their fallen comrades during attacks. Since the new recruits, rushed forward to make up the losses, were often insufficiently trained and badly equipped, they suffered frightful losses. As a result many soldiers and noncoms lost morale, sometimes disobeying orders and having to be driven forward by machine guns at their back.16 When tales of such disasters spread to the home front, patriotism evaporated, anger at superiors grew, and a feeling took hold that only a radical change could end the ceaseless carnage.
The tsarist government proved incapable of remedying the situation, because it was itself in a state of disarray. After the fall of Warsaw, Tsar Nicholas II made the fateful decision to go to the front and assume command of the army. This choice was a mistake since he thereby became personally responsible for any defeat, while his departure left a political vacuum in the capital. Though the Duma was only intermittently in session, its spokesmen increasingly criticized the government, which was led by weak ministers like Boris Stürmer and Alexander Protopopov, whose competence was doubted even in ruling circles. In order to create a “government of public trust,” the deputies organized a “Progressive Bloc”—but the tsar refused their request for parliamentarization, since it would diminish his autocratic power. The conflict deepened between the state bureaucrats, intent on maintaining control, and the representatives of civil society, who were organizing their own war-industry committees. By November 1916 frustration over the chain of such blunders had provoked the liberal deputy Pavel Miliukov to the point of shouting: “Is it stupidity or treason?”17
Part of the problem was the meddling of Tsarina Alexandra, who tried to run the court and government in Nicholas’ absence. As granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she belonged to the highest nobility, but the Russian people intensely disliked her German birth and reticent style. Moreover, she constantly interfered in personnel decisions, appointing and dismissing favorites without sufficient concern for their abilities. The most serious problem was her association with the mystic monk Grigori Rasputin, who claimed to be able to stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac crown prince Alexei. This faith healer led a debauched life centered on alcohol and sex while bestowing favors on his relations and intervening in government affairs. But since there was no medical cure for the inability of her son’s blood to clot, the desperate tsarina would not part company with him, though the capital was rife with rumors of his misdeeds. In December 1916 Prince Felix Yusupov and several other aristocrats poisoned, shot, and drowned Rasputin in order to restore some credibility to the crown.18 But when the monk finally died, the damage had already been done.
On February 23, 1917, popular patience finally ran out. The winter had been brutally cold, and the food supply had broken down in Petrograd. With the metalworkers striking, angry housewives, joined by textile laborers, demonstrated on International Women’s Day for more bread to feed their starving families, and some women plundered the bakeries for flour. On the following day the crowds grew to 150,000 people, confrontations with the police multiplied, and some demonstrators were shot. In solidarity with the protesters, the unions proclaimed a general strike, which immobilized the Russian capital, and the crowds began to shout “Down with the tsar!” “Down with the war!” Finally the absent tsar ordered the military to quell the unrest, but protesters chanted “They are shooting our mothers and sisters.” Shocked by the brutality of the police and some troops who fired into the crowds, other soldiers, including the Cossack cavalry, began to change sides and shoot their officers.19 When his army no longer obeyed, the tsar’s power vanished. The bread riots and strikes had turned into a veritable February Revolution.
The fall of tsarist autocracy posed the question of how to organize the revolutionary order so as to prevent anarchy. Though loyalist chief of staff Mikhail Alekseev was ready to march on Petrograd, the spreading unrest forced him to sacrifice the tsar in order to preserve the army. Leading Duma deputies such as Miliukov and Alexander Guchkov tried to save the monarchy by transforming it into a constitutional system, but Nicholas II was so discredited that he had to resign. It was the pressure of people who had taken to the streets, organized according to the 1905 example into revolutionary councils, that dictated a more drastic change. In these soviets of deputies, elected from factories, military units, and the countryside, the agrarian populists (SRs), social democrats (Mensheviks), and radical revolutionaries (Bolsheviks) vied for power. Eventually the moderate Duma also lumbered into action and constituted a Provisional Government under the zemstvo leader Prince Georgy Lvov. In an informal division of labor, called “dual power,” the Duma set out to govern and draft a constitution while the Petrograd Soviet, composed of revolutionary deputies, sought to defend the interests of the proletariat.20
In many respects, the February Revolution was a popular uprising like the Springtime of the Peoples in 1848.21 The autocratic order collapsed under the strain of losing a war, since even its adherents admitted that the tsar was incompetent. The middle-class Duma, elected by restricted suffrage, simply wanted a larger voice in running national affairs but was eventually willing to gamble on a republic. It was the rebellious mass of women, workers, and soldiers demanding “Bread and Peace” that overthrew the autocracy when military discipline gave way and the rank and file, led by sergeants, took power into their hands. The bourgeois liberals merely wanted a constitution with civil rights, a market economy, and improved education, in short, a western form of modernity for Russia. Hating wartime starvation, exploitation, and death, the long-suffering masses demanded more radical changes in Russian society, but they were not so sure of how to realize their aims. Since orthodox Marxism suggested that the bourgeoisie needed to transform the country first, the soviets were initially content just to control the Provisional Government.
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
Though the collapse of the old order provided a chance for a liberal modernization of Russia, the middle classes had to contend with the more far-reaching demands of the soviet-led masses. Possessing only a limited social base, the Provisional Government, nonetheless, had the advantage of holding the official reins of power, since the soldiers’ and workers’ deputies lacked practical experience, even if they had greater revolutionary legitimacy. Both agreed in early March on an informal coalition in order to realize the shared goals of introducing political freedom, guaranteeing rights of speech and assembly, amnestying political prisoners, drafting a constitution, ending discrimination, and curbing the bureaucracy and police. In his first interview as prime minister, Lvov announced optimistically: “I believe in the great heart of the Russian people … and am convinced that it is the basis of our freedom, justice and truth.”22 Since the Provisional Government had international support, government expertise, and habits of command on its side, its eventual failure surprised observers in the Allied capitals.
The personal style and political orientation of the new cabinet represented a gradual evolution from tsarism, not a radical break with hated autocracy. Prime Minister Lvov, Foreign Minister Miliukov, and Minister of Defense Guchkov were experienced parliamentarians, used to giving speeches, drafting legislation, and negotiating compromises. Official photographs portray them as gentlemen (no women!) in dark suits, respectable representatives of property and education, with grave demeanor, conscious of their responsibility. Politically they came from the Center and moderate Right, since the limited suffrage of the Duma underrepresented the lower classes. Their prosperous lifestyle isolated them from the suffering of the Russian masses because they lived in country villas or urban apartments, supported by servants. Their political project was to westernize their country, write a republican constitution, accelerate economic development, increase literacy, and promote science—in short to transform Russians into modern Europeans.23 Such leaders could manage a gradual transition but not a dramatic revolution.
In contrast, the revolutionary council deputies were representatives of mass sentiment who lacked the necessary experience to govern a vast country during wartime. Even the members of the Petrograd Executive Committee like Nikoloz Chkheidze and Alexander Kerensky were little known, serving as representatives of their parties such as the SRs, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks. Snapshots show them wild-eyed with excitement, riding on trucks or haranguing crowds, wearing workingmen’s blouses or military tunics and holding rifles as signs of newfound power. Though they tended to be union leaders, noncommissioned officers, or persons with some education, they were closer to the people, suffering cold, hunger, and abuse along with them. Their “order number one” therefore called for the establishment of soldiers’ councils, claimed political control of the army, and abolished some excesses of military discipline. Their political ideals tended toward an egalitarian democracy with improved working conditions, enough food for everyone, and the return of peace—implying not just a political but also a social revolution.24
The most divisive issue between the Provisional Government and the soviets was the continuation of the war, pitting patriotic officers against defeatist recruits. Western capitals greeted the February Revolution with enthusiasm, since the collapse of autocracy in Russia facilitated their propaganda by creating a united front of democratic countries against the authoritarian Central Powers. As a bourgeois liberal, Foreign Minister Miliukov wanted to persevere until a “decisive victory,” promising to abide by all international commitments in pursuit of expansionist war aims. The war-weary Petrograd Soviet was outraged, since it saw no reason to prolong a losing conflict at the cost of further lives. To keep antiwar demonstrations from turning into a civil war, the moderate voices in the soviets proposed a compromise of “revolutionary defensism” that would continue the war to stop the German invader, while striving for a compromise peace. This crisis was finally resolved through the creation of “a coalition of reason,” in which six SRs and Mensheviks like Kerensky entered the cabinet of the Provisional Government with a program of radical democratization.25
Just when it seemed that the government might stabilize through broadening its political base, the radical émigrés began to return and advocate a pacifist course. Exiled revolutionary leaders had watched the February Revolution with elation and frustration, eager to participate themselves. Intent on eliminating one major enemy through internal turmoil, the Imperial German government even shipped Lenin and thirty of his followers in a sealed train from Switzerland to Sweden so that they could spread his defeatist message in Russia. Others, such as the SR Viktor Chernov, the Menshevik Martov, and the Bolshevik Trotsky, came back on their own, while still others, including Lev Kamenev and Stalin, returned from banishment in Siberia. Cut off from Russian patriotism, most of the exiles had joined the left wing of the Second International in denouncing the war. Their return to Russia provided the war-weary masses with an intellectual and organizational leadership that sought to steer the soviets away from defensism.26 While the middle class continued to support the war, the soldiers, workers, and peasants now found new arguments to oppose it.
Seeking to counter the dissolution of the army, the ambitious minister of defense Kerensky authorized another offensive in order to revive Russian confidence. As a moderate socialist and member of the Petrograd Soviet, he supported a bill of soldiers’ rights but simultaneously sought to restore the authority of the officer corps. Moreover he undertook a propaganda trip to the front, in which his eloquent pleas for the continuation of fighting were received with applause. He also fired the previous chief of staff and replaced him with General Alexei Brusilov, who had been a more successful commander. On June 16, 1917, the Russian army mounted its last major attack in Galicia against Austrian troops, gained thirty kilometers—and stalled. On July 6, the combined forces of the Central Powers counterattacked and broke through, precipitating a full-fledged flight. As a result, the Russian lines disintegrated, with many soldiers, even entire units, deserting and making their way home.27 Instead of saving the country with a revolutionary levée en masse, Kerensky hastened a military defeat that pulled the Provisional Government down with it.
The government similarly failed to make headway in domestic issues, since the positions of the liberal and socialist deputies were basically irreconcilable. While the middle-class ministers insisted on respect for private property, the representatives of revolutionary soviets wanted workers’ protection and land for the peasants. In the factories, union spokesmen demanded an eight-hour workday, better pay, and workers’ control. In the countryside, peasant councils began to grab land, animals, and tools from the nobles. At the edges of the empire, restive nationalities like the Finns, Ukrainians, and Baltic peoples declared their independence, supported by the German military. Since the bourgeois Constitutional Democratic Party (informally, Kadets) opposed the leftward drift of the government, its members resigned, precipitating a crisis that was resolved only when Kerensky became prime minister in a restructured cabinet with more ministers drawn from the Petrograd Soviet. In the Petrograd City Council election the Kadet Party shrank to 21 percent, the moderate socialists (SRs and Mensheviks) won 44 percent of the vote, but ominously the radical Bolsheviks advanced as well, to 21 percent.28
By midsummer signs were multiplying that the Provisional Government was failing for a number of structural as well as political reasons. Confronted by uncooperative conservatives from above and discontented radicals from below, the Russian middle class was simply not large and powerful enough to carry through a liberal modernization of such a chaotic country on its own. Even if the soviets initially refused to take power due to ideology and inexperience, they competed effectively for popular allegiance by proposing programs of more drastic changes. Added to the inherent problems of dual power were basic mistakes in policy. Most important was the decision to continue the war with another offensive, a desperate gamble that speeded the dissolution of military authority at a time when civil order was vanishing. But equally significant was the conflict between bourgeois interest in the sanctity of private property and mass desire for economic relief through social reform.29 Failing to understand that peace and bread were more pressing needs than a new constitution, the Provisional Government threw the chance for a democratic development away.
RED OCTOBER
Since the Bolshevik seizure of power seemed to have come out of nowhere, the reasons for its surprising success are still hotly disputed. No doubt the ineffectiveness of the Provisional Government provided the opportunity for a further radicalization according to the pattern of the French Revolution a century and a quarter before. But surprisingly the popular disillusionment with Kerensky did not help the SRs or Mensheviks but rather boosted the Bolsheviks. Traditional accounts argue that the clairvoyant and ruthless leadership of Lenin, not matched by any competitor, was the key difference between them. Soviet apologists have also pointed to the growing support of the masses for the Bolshevik program of bread, land, and peace, which gave their takeover an aura of legitimacy that the others lacked.30 In contrast, post-Soviet critics emphasize that the communist takeover was technically the result of a coup d’état. Was the “Glorious October Revolution” therefore the triumph of grassroots democracy or the putsch of a radical minority leading inevitably to dictatorship?
It is difficult to gauge the contribution of Lenin’s leadership, since the cult around his personality has created a larger-than-life image of exceptional charisma. Born as Vladimir I. Ulyanov into a liberal family of teachers, he seemed predestined for a promising legal career. But when his older brother was executed for sedition, Vladimir vowed to become a revolutionary, joining the radical wing of the labor movement. To escape from tsarist persecution and imprisonment in Siberia, he went into exile in Switzerland, seeking to apply Marxist structural analysis to Russia’s belated development. In the process he adopted the pen name “Lenin,” developed a spartan lifestyle, and made himself into the prototype of a professional revolutionary. With various pamphlets like What Is to Be Done? (1902) he developed a reputation as a brilliant theorist because of his ability to relate socialist ideas to concrete political situations. By denouncing the First World War as an imperialist struggle, he impressed his comrades with his iron will and total dedication, though he continued to have difficulty in convincing them with his tactical insights.31
Equally important, however, was the growing appeal of the Bolshevik Party due to its uncompromising opposition to the war and its promises of food and land. In the underground, the party had attracted a bevy of talented individuals like Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev, and Nikolai Bukharin. When these organizers were allowed to operate in the open, they transformed the Bolsheviks from revolutionary cadres into a mass-membership organization capable of taking power. In contrast to the SRs and Mensheviks, who were compromised by entering the Provisional Government, Lenin’s party profited from its refusal to cooperate, growing from a few tens of thousands to about a quarter of a million members by midsummer. In the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which met in June, they still had only 105 seats compared with 285 for the SRs and 248 for the Mensheviks. But the disappointed workers, soldiers, and peasants increasingly flocked to them, giving the Bolsheviks one-third of the votes in the Petrograd City Council elections in August and half of the seats in the Moscow ballot in late September.32
Another crucial factor was the inability of the Provisional Government to control the soviets and maintain military discipline. When in early July a machine-gun company was ordered to the front, a throng of workers and soldiers protested, marched toward the center of Petrograd, and shouted “All power to the soviets!” Confronted with a spontaneous revolt, Lenin cautioned, “If we now seized power, it would be naive to believe that we could keep it.” Since the Bolsheviks were only a small minority, he argued that they should wait until they gained more support. This refusal to lead the crowds saved the Provisional Government for another day. But Kerensky also faced a threat from the right. In August, frightened middle-class parliamentarians and tsarist officers persuaded General Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov to save the country from impending catastrophe by restoring law and order. When he heard rumors that the military was prepared to take power, Kerensky had to call on the workers and soldiers to stop the troops from reaching Petrograd. Such crises demonstrated that the government was being ground down between the political extremes.33
By mid-September Lenin judged the time ripe for a Bolshevikled uprising. From the security of Finland, he exhorted his followers: “The Bolsheviks, having maintained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers Deputies of both capitals, can and must take power into their own hands.” Afraid that Kerensky might create a legitimate government if the Constituent Assembly met to approve a democratic constitution, Lenin claimed a popular mandate: “The majority of the people are on our side.” Unwilling to observe democratic formalities, he proposed an “armed uprising in Petrograd and Moscow” to overthrow the parliamentary regime: “History will never forgive us if we do not assume power now.” Fearing that a premature putsch would defeat the revolution, Kamenev warned: “No, a thousand times no.” But after a fierce debate Lenin convinced him as well as other reluctant party leaders, and preparations for the seizure of power began.34 This gamble rested on the calculation that the Bolsheviks could dominate the new military revolutionary committees that had assumed control of all troop movements around the capital.
Ironically, the Provisional Government itself provided the pretext for the uprising in late October. Having heard that something was afoot, Kerensky ordered two Bolshevik newspapers shut down, intending to arrest the leaders of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee. Claiming “Petrograd is in danger! The revolution is in danger! The people are in danger!” the Bolsheviks appealed to the soviets to fight the threatening counterrevolution. On the evening of October 24, 1917, Lenin urged his party dramatically: “The government is tottering. One must give it the coup de grace, cost what it may. Delaying action means death.” Directed by Trotsky, the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee therefore ordered the Red Guards, a paramilitary organization of Bolshevik volunteers, to seize the train stations, power company, postal and telegraph office, state bank, and strategic streets and bridges. When Kerensky fled in a U.S. embassy car, the uprising had succeeded without bloodshed, since the Provisional Government could not marshal any military force to defeat it. Contrary to later legend, the other ministers also surrendered in the Winter Palace without a fight.35
The Bolshevik leaders wasted no time in exploiting their victory by dominating the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. On the morning of October 25, a flyer signed by the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee announced that the Provisional Government had been overthrown: “State power has passed into the hands of the organs of the Petrograd Soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies.” As justification the revolutionaries claimed: “The aims for which the people have fought, immediate conclusion of a democratic peace, abolition of landed property rights of estate owners, workers’ control of the production, creation of a soviet government—all that has been secured.” Received by stormy applause in the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin explained that this was “the third Russian Revolution,” which would ultimately lead “to the victory of socialism.” Though the Bolsheviks held only 338 of 739 seats in the All-Russian Congress, a clear majority of deputies supported the creation of a soviet government. Elated, Trotsky taunted the losing Mensheviks: “Go where you belong, onto the rubbish heap of history!”36
The Red October was therefore a minority coup d’état that claimed to be a popular revolution from below. In contrast to 1905 and February 1917, the Bolshevik seizure of power was not a spontaneous grassroots revolt but a carefully planned and well-executed putsch by a radical party. Lenin could point to indications of growing public support for demands of peace, bread, and land, which had increased the Bolshevik voice within the revolutionary councils all over Russia and gained them majorities in the military revolutionary committees that controlled the troops around Petrograd and Moscow. But in terms of democratic theory, the Bolshevik takeover was not a revolution by but for the people. Lenin and his party would not be bothered by the formal mechanisms of democracy, since in a Rousseauian sense they believed they knew what was good for the Russian people and were therefore willing to force them to follow their lead.37 While the Bolshevik coup threw their own country into turmoil, and its violence frightened the European middle classes, among war-weary soldiers and workers the October Revolution served as a beacon of hope for peace and equality.
SOVIET POWER
Their seizure of power confronted the Bolshevik leaders with the challenge of actually governing a chaotic country and implementing socialist modernization. Even experienced Marxists like Plekhanov were skeptical that they could hold on to political power, since “in the population of our state, the proletariat forms not the majority, but the minority.” To overcome such hesitation, Trotsky argued “what has happened was an uprising and no conspiracy,” since the Bolsheviks acted on behalf of the “masses of the people.” Trying to consolidate power, Lenin quickly constituted a new government, a council of people’s deputies (soviet narodnykh kommissarov), called Sovnarkom, which claimed to represent the soviets.38 In the deepening anarchy of tsarists and parliamentarians preparing for a comeback and moderate revolutionaries smarting over being outmaneuvered, this self-proclaimed socialist regime sought to establish its authority by popular laws and use of force. Since it was barely able to control the streets of the capitals, the new Sovnarkom, or Soviet, government faced a tough task in maintaining power and putting its program into practice.
The first effort to gain the support of war-weary soldiers was the decree on peace of October 26. This proclamation called on “all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace.” The Bolsheviks adopted the Menshevik slogan of “no annexations, no indemnities,” adding to it the self-determination of various nationalities, and the repudiation of “secret diplomacy,” which voided tsarist treaty commitments. Delighted to get rid of one important enemy, the German government accepted an armistice and entered into negotiations on November 19. When it became clear that the Soviet side was playing for time, hoping for revolution among other belligerents, Berlin concluded a separate peace with Ukraine on February 9, 1918. A furious Trotsky walked out, declaring “no war, no peace,” but the Germans called his bluff and resumed their offensive, forcing the Soviets to sign the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. Getting “breathing space” in order to consolidate the revolution by leaving the war cost Russia the independence of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine.39
Other moves to reward Bolshevik followers were the decrees on land and on workers’ control. Proclaimed immediately, the former abolished all private property in the countryside, turning the noble, church, and crown domains over to peasant councils, called volost’. In effect, this measure legalized an ongoing process of expropriation, allowing peasants to govern themselves. Politically, it was a brilliant move because it stole the chief plank from the populist SRs, but economically it was of dubious value, since the distribution of land fragmented holdings and privileged self-sufficiency rather than creating a secure food supply for the cities. The latter order established “workers’ control over industry” through “elected committees supervising production and management,” which gradually transferred ownership of large enterprises to municipalities or the state.40 The fulfillment of other trade-union demands like the eight-hour workday and the introduction of mandatory health insurance helped the workers, like the farmers, to accept direction from the Bolshevik-controlled government, though the Soviet regime soon curtailed such newly won gains.
The Bolsheviks also resorted to dictatorial means in the name of “revolutionary class struggle.” Within the soviets, they outflanked and divided their competitors by stealing their programmatic thunder. To control public opinion they also prohibited the publication of all press organs critical of their policies, abolishing the very rights that they had demanded from tsarist autocracy. In early December they started to round up leaders of the Kadet Party and uncooperative SRs or Mensheviks as “counterrevolutionaries.” By founding their own secret police, called the Cheka, they established a police state. Its head, the fanatical Felix Dzerzhinsky, repudiated “revolutionary justice,” since he believed “now there is war—face to face, a struggle to the end. Life or Death.” Since Lenin did not want to go back to parliamentarianism, he suppressed the Constituent Assembly, the hope of all moderate reformers. Aware that they had won only 175 out of 707 assembly seats while the SRs had received 370, the Bolsheviks simply locked out the delegates after the first day, aborting the experiment in Russian parliamentary government.41
The ensuing Civil War, immortalized by Boris Pasternak, speeded the establishment of a Bolshevik dictatorship by unleashing untold terror on the people caught between the fronts. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly indicated that the Soviet regime could be overthrown only by the use of force. Although the western Allies landed some troops in northern and southern Russia to safeguard their military supplies, they could not really decide whom to support. During 1918 a series of confusing engagements developed in which German occupiers, the Ukrainian Rada, the Czech legion, and SRs in Samara played a role. During the following year White Russian generals Aleksandr Kolchak, Anton Denikin, and Pyotr Wrangel mounted concentric offensives toward Moscow, but lack of coordination led to their successive defeats. Energized by the tireless Trotsky, the Red Army, newly constituted out of former tsarist officers and revolutionary soldiers, triumphed over all enemies, reconquering Ukraine in 1920.42 This force even grew strong enough to fight the reconstituted Polish national state to a draw in a full-scale conventional war.
War communism radicalized the Soviet regime further by emphasizing that “order and discipline” were needed to assure its survival. Since industrial and agricultural production plummeted while inflation soared, a barter economy developed in which grain had to be requisitioned by force and goods traded in a black market. Concurrently the Cheka grew by leaps and bounds, accusing and imprisoning thousands of victims without any recourse to law. Opportunists now also thronged to the Bolshevik Party, since it had acquired a monopoly of political power. When the soldiers of the Kronstadt naval base protested for a return to the original revolutionary aims of freedom and equality, the Soviet government ruthlessly suppressed the revolt, discrediting itself in the process.43 Even Lenin realized that these draconian measures threatened to alienate the very workers and peasants that the regime claimed to represent. As a result, he reluctantly allowed the reintroduction of some market incentives in his New Economic Policy, while at the same time strengthening internal controls over the members of his party.
Though the Soviet government barely hung on at home, its message of peace and equality resonated in Europe, inspiring workers and soldiers among all belligerents to demand an end to the slaughter. Afraid of pacifist and socialist contagion, the continental governments redoubled their propaganda efforts to counter the strikes and demonstrations. But Bolshevik hopes for help from a “world revolution” were disappointed. While antiwar slogans hastened the collapse of the Central Powers, Soviet-style republics arose only briefly in Munich and Budapest. To isolate the rest of the world from the revolutionary virus, the Paris Peace Conference created a cordon sanitaire of independent states between Russia and Central Europe that built on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Promoting revolution through the foundation of the Comintern in 1919, the Soviet government remained an international outcast without recognition or treaty relations. Only when it proved impossible to settle debts between the former Allies in 1922 did the pariahs Berlin and Moscow sign a neutrality treaty at Rapallo, canceling each other’s financial demands and starting covert military cooperation.44
Ultimately, the reasons for the survival of the Bolshevik minority dictatorship were more complex than either popular legitimacy or ruthless compulsion. Contrary to allegations of a capitalist conspiracy, it was the ineptness and lack of coordination of their enemies that gave the embattled Soviet leaders a lease on life. No doubt the early decrees on peace, land, and workers’ control also fulfilled the wishes of a war-weary, land-hungry, and exploited populace in the metropolitan centers and sprawling countryside of Russia. The systematic suppression of real or imagined counterrevolutionaries by the Cheka and the defeat of various White or Green (local peasant) forces by the Red Army also played an important part. Moreover, Lenin’s tenacious will and pragmatism in adjusting policy and the iron discipline of a growing Bolshevik Party in meeting the postrevolutionary challenges contributed as well.45 In spite of many actual disappointments, the vision of a socialist modernity—living in peace, providing enough food, and offering easier work—retained some appeal, because it promised to propel the former tsarist empire into a better future.
REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
In the early twentieth century, Russia had to choose between several paths toward modernity, each offering a particular combination of advantages and costs. After losing the Crimean and Japanese wars, supporters of tsarist autocracy like Count Witte understood that the country needed to develop economically in order to strengthen its military and remain competitive with other powers. While freeing the serfs dissolved the traditional rural order of noble estates and peasant communes, the rapid industrialization from the 1890s onward created a new urban proletariat. The challenge of a defensive, partial modernization was the need to enable economic development without upsetting social hierarchies or weakening tsarist administrative control. The paradoxical project of trying to catch up with western progress while maintaining a different Slavic identity foundered during the First World War, since this contradictory system proved unable to sustain a war of attrition. Autocratic “modernization from above” therefore created increasing contradictions that brought the tsarist system down with it.46
The creation of a parliamentary government after the February Revolution of 1917 opened up a different possibility for gradual, democratic development led by the middle class. The Provisional Government consisted of experienced Duma deputies who intended to draft a western-style constitution in order to safeguard the rule of law and self-government. Supported by leading businessmen and professionals, they could draw on the organizational expertise of civil society working in the zemstvos. Their economic program sought to free individual initiative though a competitive market, sparking further dynamic growth. Abhorring anarchy, this scenario was, unfortunately, fixated on creating a constitution and protecting private property rather than responding to popular demands for increasing the food supply and distributing land to the peasants. But the fundamental error of the Provisional Government was its decision to continue the war, which cost it the support of the weary masses. By pursuing a nationalist course, the fledgling bourgeoisie gambled away the chance for a liberal development toward modernity.47
The failure of these alternatives opened the door for the radical attempt at modernization by revolution from below. The Bolsheviks won the competition among the socialist parties since they presented a program that promised to fulfill the immediate wishes of the masses. The populist SRs mainly agitated for the distribution of land, while the Mensheviks only wanted to moderate the necessary capitalist development by social reform. It was Lenin’s revision of Marxism in The State and Revolution, calling for a socialist revolution to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, that provided the theoretical justification for the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Moreover, his pragmatic decision not to force the issue in early July but to wait until the situation had deteriorated further in late October proved ultimately correct.48 Though the Bolsheviks started the year as a minority even within the soviets, their slogan of “Bread, Land, and Peace” appealed to the workers, peasants, and soldiers, steadily increasing their following. The success of their coup gave them an opportunity, inconceivable by orthodox Marxist theory, to realize their socialist dreams.
The Bolsheviks understood that they could retain power in the long run only if they succeeded in modernizing the economy in order to make their social program palatable for the masses. Lenin himself believed that “Communism is the Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country.” In February 1920 a Soviet commission, supported by scientists and engineers, therefore started to implement the “GOELRO plan” for Russia’s electrification by building a network of thirty regional power plants, harnessing hydropower as well as using coal. This gigantic effort would raise the power output more than fourfold from the last prewar year to 8.8 billion kilowatt-hours within a decade. With such rapid electrification Lenin wanted to promote “the organization of industry on the basis of modern advanced technology,” linking town and country in order “to overcome, even in the most remote corners of the land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism.”49 This was a classic statement of the communist path to modernity, which promised to improve the lives of the masses by introducing industrial technology.
Revolutionary modernization offered Russia the chance of rapid development—albeit at tremendous human cost. Leaping over the entire stage of historical development described by Marx as bourgeois capitalism and democracy required much compulsion, since processes like the spread of literacy that elsewhere had taken several generations had to be compressed into a few years. For the Bolsheviks, aided by the intelligentsia, the design and construction of a new Soviet society was a heady project, justifying their dictatorship in moral terms. But the majority of the people did not necessarily buy into this utopian transformation, wanting just to carry on their normal lives in predictable circumstances. All too soon it became apparent that the compulsory effort to reach modernity had a negative side: forced labor in industry, widespread hunger in the countryside, and a network of prison camps all over the country. Since it is difficult to tote up the balance between this appalling suffering and the actual improvement of lives, judgments about the October Revolution will remain controversial for a long time to come.50