Discussion 11

Reading: Dr. Stephen Kreis', " The Russian

Revolution, Red October and the Bolshevik Coup"

 

 

People do not make revolutions eagerly any more than they

do war. There is this difference, however, that in war

compulsion plays the decisive role, in revolution there is no

compulsion except that of circumstances. A revolution takes

place only when there is no other way out. And the

insurrection, which rises above a revolution like a peak in

the mountain chain of its events, can be no more evoked at

will than the revolution as a whole. The masses advance

and retreat several times before they make up their minds

to the final assault.

---Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution

Damp winds blew off the Gulf of Finland, but there were no

warm clothes in the shops. Just window after window full of

flowers, corsets, dog collars, false hair -- bourgeois items for

which there was absolutely no demand. Lines for bread,

sugar and tobacco started forming at four o'clock in the

morning. On September 25, 1917, Kerensky appointed a

new cabinet. It was the fourth provisional Government, the

third coalition and the seventh major reshuffling since the

revolution had gotten underway back in February. The town

of Reval, the last stronghold between the Germans and

Petrograd, was evacuated by the Russians on October 3rd.

Every day now, the people of Petrograd asked the

government when their city would be evacuated. Barges

floated down the Neva, laden with the art treasures of the

Hermitage as well as sacks full of papers from all the

ministries. One barge sank. "It doesn't matter," said one of

the sailors as the barge went down. Indeed, it didn't matter.

Every day hundreds of thousands of "hungry, tired and

angry people" listened to Bolshevik propaganda served up

gratis on the streets of Petrograd. It was a simple message,

according to Sukhanov: "The rich have lots of everything,

the poor have nothing. Everything will belong to the poor…."

It didn't matter that it was all lies. "After all," wrote the

young Russian poet Boris Pasternak, "what everybody

needed were not empires, but bread, salt and candles."

Leon Trotsky, the "famous leader of the bandits and the

hooligans," caused a sensation at the pre-parliament. He

openly accused the government and the bourgeoisie of

encouraging the "bony hand of hunger," to strangle the

revolution. He said they were preparing to surrender the

capital as part of a government conspiracy. Such a

statement drew shouts from the right, shouts about

Germans, sealed trains and the cry of "Bastard!" Then he

and all the Bolsheviks walked out of the meeting. Sukhanov

thought that they were "now taking up arms against the

entire old world." In "ruined, half-wild, petty bourgeois,

economically shattered" Russia, this small party was trying

to create an unheard of proletarian state and a new society.

They had "put an end to the united front of the democracy

for ever." Civil war would surely follow. The lust for blood

fueled by class hatred was strong. Manors and country

estates were burning. Members of the ancien r�gime were

being casually murdered by the mob. In a village near Baku,

half a dozen ragged deserters bayoneted an elderly general

who had told them, "this is my single fault. I love Russia. I

love my people, I demand that you let me go." Needless to

say, the deserters did not like his use of the word "demand."

The mob turned on the two ladies with him and trampled

their bodies to death "like a manure heap." The civil war

implicit in the walk-out, as all those concerned knew full

well, would extend throughout Russia.

Essential to a successful Bolshevik takeover was deception.

And it was Leon Trotsky who was brilliant in formulating its

tactics. The country was in no mood for a single party

power. An uprising carried out under the slogan of the

Soviet, Trotsky realized, was "something quite different." So,

"whilst moving forward all along the line," he later

explained, "we maintained an appearance of

defensiveness." He could not do this with a properly

convened Soviet Congress. There was not the slightest

chance of a Bolshevik victory in a national Soviet election so

the existing Congress was illegally packed with Bolsheviks.

The decision to mount the coup was taken on October 10th.

Lenin had returned to Petrograd disguised as a train

engineer. At 10pm he crossed the city for the first Central

Committee meeting he had attended since July. The meeting

was held in Sukhanov's apartment. His wife, Galina, was a

Bolshevik, and had ensured that her husband would not

return until late that night. Twelve members took part. They

all wore wigs and make-up, glued-on mustaches and false

beards. Lenin wore a wig of gray hair. It had been ordered

from a wigmaker who worked for the Maryinsky Theater and

whose normal clientele were aristocrats. He was puzzled

why Lenin wanted a gray model since most of his customers

wanted to look younger rather than older. Lenin also wore

glasses and had shaved off his trademark beard. Zinoviev,

known for his flowing mane, shaved his head and wore a

false beard. The Provisional Government's chance to arrest

those plotting the coup was missed. Had the Government

swooped down on the meeting that night they would have

made history -- Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Kollantai

were all there. So too were Felix Dzerzhinsky, future head of

the secret police, Yakov Sverdlov, the man responsible for

murdering Nicholas and his family and, of course, Joseph

Stalin (see Lecture 10). The Government ought to have

acted but didn't -- one more example of the impotence of

the Provisional Government itself.

Around three in the morning, Lenin picked up a child's ruled

tablet and wrote the following resolution: "recognizing…that

an armed uprising is inevitable and that its time has come,

the Central Committee suggests that all party organizations

be guided by this." The exhausted committee members

ended the meeting, ate a light breakfast, and then left

Sukhanov's flat to spread the word: Now was the time to

seize power!

However, the Twelve were not the only individuals with

knowledge of the coup. The newspapers had been talking

about it for days. When the Cabinet met on October 16th,

there was no sense of alarm. They had simply assumed that

a coup was unlikely since by that time, any sense of surprise

had been lost. Lenin was exhausted. He dropped his wig in

the mud on his way to the Finland Station and it had to be

cleaned. He never got the hang of wearing it. "He kept

trying to straighten it," said his Bolshevik landlady,

Margarita Fofanova. Needless to say, Lenin was a very

nervous man. Sukhanov thought that Lenin's ideas -- the

smashing of the credit system, the seizure of banks, parity

of wages, and workers' control -- were "so disproportionately

few in comparison with the immensity of the tasks, and so

unknown to anyone outside the Bolshevik Party, that you

might say they were completely irrelevant." Maxim Gorky

described the plotters of the coup as "crazed fanatics."

On October 22nd, the commissar for the western front

cabled a message to Kerensky that said: "There is nothing

left but to give up. Disintegration has attained its limit." The

newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti apologized to its readers

that it could run only a fraction of the stories about mutinies

and pogroms that flooded its newsroom each day. Kharkov,

Tambov, and Ostrog "merge into one dark picture of

murders, pillages, arsons and debauch." Mobs searched

everywhere for axes and crow bars so they could break into

wine cellars. Landowners and shopkeepers who were

suspected of speculation were beaten to death with clubs

and the "same fate awaits Jews, just because they are

Jews."

In Petrograd, everything could be had for big money, that is,

if you had it. Cab fares were fifteen times their pre-war rate.

Soldiers were hired by the hour to stand in lines and sell

their chocolate rations at twelve rubles to the pound. Felix

Yusupov, back in Petrograd after his brief exile for the killing

of Rasputin, found social life "agreeable once more" and

began to give parties in his palace. If the Bolshevik coup

came, most thought it would fail. "I only wish they would

come out," Kerensky told the British ambassador, "and then

I will put them down." David Francis, the US ambassador,

thought that a golden opportunity was being lost.

"Beginning to think the Bolsheviks will make no

demonstrations," he cabled Washington. "If so, shall regret

as believe sentiment turning against them and time

opportune moment for giving them a wholesome lesson…."

With the coup right around the corner, there were no plans

to cope with it. At 5 AM on October 24th, military cadets

acting on Kerensky's orders broke the page molds of

Bolshevik newspapers and sealed off the offices. Trotsky

could hardly contain his excitement: "Kerensky is on the

offensive." It's pretty clear what this meant: now the

Bolsheviks could accuse the government of counter-

revolution. "Although an insurrection can only win on the

offensive," Trotsky wrote in his massive History of the

Russian Revolution, "it develops better the more it looks like

self-defense."

By mid-morning, Bolshevik troops retook the newspaper

offices without a struggle. The molds were repaired and the

papers began to pour off the presses once again. Kerensky

cabled the front for additional armed forces but he hoped he

would not have to use them. He had at his disposal, 200

cadets, 200 women soldiers and 134 unattached officers for

policing duties. Trotsky was at the Smolny Institute, the

former home of a finishing school for aristocratic girls, but

now used as the general headquarters for the Bolshevik

Party and the Petrograd Soviet. A delegation from the

Petrograd City Hall arrived during the afternoon to ask on

behalf of the mayor whether the uprising would take place

or not. Trotsky met the delegation and assured them that

indeed the insurrection was underway. The delegation left

the Smolny a bit puzzled for there was very little indication

that the city was in the midst of an insurrection. The rest of

the city, meanwhile, figured that since there were no

outward signs of insurrection, that the coup had not been

attempted. Elegant men and women, fashionable Petrograd,

assembled at the Alexandrinsky Theatre to watch Alexei

Tolstoy's play The Death of Ivan the Terrible. Others, suitably

dressed, were at the Maryinsky listening to Fedor Ivanovich

Chaliapin in Boris Godunov. The Restaurant de Paris was

turning away diners unlucky enough not to have made

reservations. The cinemas, the bars and the night clubs

were bustling hives of activity. With the Bolshevik coup just

hours away, it's hard to fathom that fashionable Petrograd

could remain so passive and unaware

Not so Lenin. He spent the better part of the evening pacing

the floor of his hideaway apartment. He couldn't stand the

slow pace of events, the indecision in both Smolny and the

Winter Palace. He was also still getting information about

the supposed coup second-hand. That evening Lenin sat

down and wrote a letter to his wife, Krupskaya, who was

then at the Vyborg party headquarters. It was now 7 PM and

it was necessary, Lenin said, to get on with the uprising.

"What are they afraid of?" he asked of the Central

Committee. "Just ask them if they have one hundred loyal

soldiers or Red Guards with rifles. I don't need anything

else!" Here is the full text of Lenin's letter:

Comrades!

I am writing these lines on the evening of the 6th. The

situation is extremely critical. It is as clear as can be

that delaying the uprising now really means death.

With all my power I wish to persuade the comrades that

now everything hangs on a hair, that on the order of the

day are questions that are not solved by conferences,

by congresses (even by Congresses of Soviets), but only

by the people, by the masses, by the struggle of armed

masses.

The bourgeois onslaught of the Kornilovists, the removal

of Verkhovsky, show that we must not wait. We must at

any price, this evening, to-night, arrest the Ministers,

having disarmed (defeated if they offer resistance) the

military cadets, etc.

We must not wait! We may lose everything!

The immediate gain from the seizure of power at

present is: defense of the people (not the congress, but

the people, in the first place, the army and the

peasants) against the Kornilovist government which has

driven out Verkhovsky and has hatched a second

Kornilov plot.

Who should seize power?

At present this is not important. Let the Military

Revolutionary Committee seize it, or "some other

institution" which declares that it will relinquish the

power only to the real representatives of the interests of

the people, the interests of the Army (immediate offer of

peace), the interests of the peasants (take the land

immediately, abolish private property), the interests of

the hungry.

It is necessary that all the boroughs, all regiments, all

forces should be mobilised and should immediately send

delegations to the Military Revolutionary Committee, to

the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, insistently

demanding that under no circumstances is power to be

left in the hands of Kerensky and Co. Until the 7th, by no

means! -- but that the matter must absolutely be

decided this evening or to-night.

History will not forgive delay by revolutionists who could

be victorious to-day (and will surely be victorious to-

day), while they risk losing much to-morrow, they risk

losing all.

If we seize power to-day, we seize it not against the

Soviets but for them.

Seizure of power is the point of the uprising; its political

task will be clarified after the seizure.

It would be a disaster or formalism to wait for the

uncertain voting of November 7. The people have a

right and a duty to decide such questions not by voting

but by force; the people have a right and duty in critical

moments of a revolution to give directions to their

representatives, even their best representatives, and

not to wait for them.

This has been proven by the history of all revolutions,

and the crime of revolutionists would be limitless if they

let go the proper moment, knowing that upon them

depends the saving of the revolution, the offer of peace,

the saving of Petrograd, the saving from starvation, the

transfer of the land to the peasants.

The government is tottering. We must deal it the death

blow at any cost.

To delay action is the same as death.

If this letter showed anything, it was the total lack of

coordination between Lenin and the Central Committee. It

also showed Lenin's deep distrust of the revolutionary

inclinations of his colleagues. Would the proposed coup

actually take place?

By 10 PM, Lenin decided to leave his flat and make his way

to the Smolny. He put on his ill-fitted wig and added a pair of

glasses but in his haste, had forgotten his makeup. So, he

wrapped a large handkerchief around his head as if he had a

toothache then caught a tram part of the way, arriving at

the Smolny just before midnight. The sentries at the main

gate refused to let him enter because his pass had expired.

He telephoned Trotsky and soon both men were ready to

make history.

Small groups of Bolshevik troops moved out of their

barracks in the early hours of Wednesday, October 25th.

They were visibly relieved at the general lack of resistance.

They took the Neva bridges, the main telegraph office, the

post offices, the railroad stations, the Central Bank and the

power stations. No shots were fired. The troops simply

surrounded the office and forced those inside into

submission. There was little evidence of retaliation. When

Kerensky woke up that morning he looked out his window

and noticed that the Bolsheviks controlled the bridge

leading to the Winter Palace. He tried to telephone the

Palace but his line was dead. So, the leader of the

Provisional Government had to do something: he decided to

leave Petrograd, go to the front and raise an army of loyal

troops so that the coup could be put down. He made his way

to the government motor pool but the Bolsheviks had

already removed all the distributors from the cars. An

ensign was sent out to see if he could requisition an

automobile that worked. The ensign made his way to the

British Embassy but his request for an automobile was

denied. The author, Vladimir Nabokov was still in his

morning bath when the ensign knocked on his door.

Somewhat upset, Nabokov told him his car was not suitable

for Kerensky's long journey to Tosno, where he was to meet

the troops. The Chief of the Militia turned the ensign away

as did the Italian Embassy. The worried ensign was about to

give up when he saw an automobile flying an American flag.

The Pierce Arrow belonged to the Assistant Military

Attach�, E. Francis Bigg. The ensign told the attach�

that the car was for Kerensky. The Americans agreed that

Kerensky could use the car but also wanted his personal

assurance. So the ensign and three Americans walked to the

General Staff Building where Kerensky assured them that he

did indeed need the car. Soon, Kerensky and several of his

aides climbed into the car and were off. However, since

Kerensky's driver, an American, really didn't know where

they were going, they ended up making several wide circles

of the Palace Square in full view of hundreds of spectators

who, of course, recognized Kerensky. It was at least thirty

minutes before Kerensky's driver found his way out of

Petrograd and toward the northern front.

Government ministers arrived at the Winter Palace by cab,

while in the Smolny, Lenin announced their overthrow. The

city pretty much ignored Lenin's claim. Trams were running,

the banks were open and factories were working. The troops

stationed themselves at strategic points but were clearly

bored. At 2:35pm, Trotsky felt compelled to hold an

extraordinary session of the Petrograd Soviet to prevent the

Congress delegates drifting away in boredom at the Smolny.

He claimed that the government had "ceased to exist," as

the result of a movement of "such enormous masses" for

which there was no parallel in history. The only real sign of

revolt was the odd armored car, siren blaring, with Bolshevik

initials splashed on its gray body. Sukhanov was so

unimpressed by it all that he went home to eat supper by

candlelight. He thought that any Bolshevik regime would be

short-lived.

The siege of the Winter Palace was so sloppy that the

American journalists John Reed and Louis Bryant were able

to stroll into the building during the afternoon. Palace

servants in their Tsarist blue uniforms took their coats, and

cadets were glad to show them around. Louise Bryant found

them "poor, uncomfortable, unhappy boys," reared in

genteel isolation and now "without a court, without a Tsar,

without all the tradition they believed in." Packing crates

and mattresses littered the floors along with cigarette butts

and empty wine bottles. Many of the defenders were drunk.

"I am very anxious to get away from Russia," remarked one

captain to Reed, "I have made up my mind to join the

American army." Two cyclists arrived with a Bolshevik

ultimatum threatening to open fire if the palace did not

surrender by 7:10pm. The ministers still had hopes that

Kerensky would appear with reinforcements and declined to

give themselves up.

As it turned out, the coup did not interfere with the evening

life of the city. The ministers in the Winter Palace dined on

soup, fish and artichokes and then ordered all the lights to

be put out. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik-manned battleship

Aurora, moored on the Neva, was ordered to open fire on

the Palace when a red light was shone from the Peter and

Paul Fortress. However, since the cruiser was fresh out of

the dockyards it had only blank ammunition on board.

Anyway, the fortress garrison could not find a red light but

eventually a purple flare was launched and the Aurora

began to fire its blanks. The cadets at the Palace opened fire

with their machine guns but it was several minutes before

they realized that no bombs were falling.

The women's detachment loyal to Kerensky, declaring that

its function was to fight Germans, left the Palace. At 11 PM,

the six-inch guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress began to fire

rounds at the 1500-room Winter Palace. One shell missed by

several hundred yards; another hit but did little damage.

Most shells fell into the Neva. Meanwhile, the Ministers took

naps. In a period of two hours, the Bolsheviks fired thirty-

five shots at the Winter Palace: only two shots found their

mark and according to Trotsky, did little more than "injure

the plaster."

At 2 AM on October 26th, a friend called on the Justice

Minister Malyantovich to ask how he was. "Not bad. In

cheerful spirits," he replied. He lay back and tried to sleep

but soon he began to hear noises. The ministers grabbed

their coats. A cadet rushed in and asked "What are the

orders of the government? To fight to the last man?"

Wearily, the ministers shouted back, "It's not necessary. It's

useless. No bloodshed!" Just then a mob of Bolsheviks

crowded into the room. One man stood at the front and

shouted: "I inform you, all you members of the Provisional

Government, that you are arrested. I am Antonov-Ovseenko,

a representative of the Military Revolutionary Committee."

Petrograd had fallen to the Bolsheviks.

COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS ON 1917

This so-called October Revolution was an "armed

insurrection" carried out by the Bolshevik Party using the

apparatus of the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin insisted that the

transfer of power from the Provisional Government to the

Bolsheviks take this militarized form rather than the political

form of a vote by the forthcoming All-Russian Congress of

Soviets, an approach favored by Zinoviev and Kamenev.

Lenin did this because he believed, as did Marx, that the

class struggle was class warfare and so necessarily involved

physical violence. No other method could demonstrate

where the real power lay. In the same manner, Lenin

understood the literal meaning of Marx's call to "expropriate

the expropriators" by urging the masses to "steal the

stolen." This was no violation of Marx's view of the logic of

history -- armed coercion was always integral to that logic.

And so, the October coup set the precedent for the

continuing use of coercion by the Party through all the

stages required to construct socialism.

From his refuge in Finland, Lenin initiated pressure for such

an insurrection in the wake of the Kornilov affair of the late

summer, and by October 10th he had persuaded the Central

Committee to vote 10 to 2 for such an action "in principle."

But the task of organizing the insurrection fell to Leon

Trotsky. In order to give the Party coup an appearance of

greater proletarian legitimacy, Trotsky delayed it so that it

would coincide with the forthcoming, national Congress of

Soviets. This was against Lenin's express command. Trotsky

also engineered the creation within the Soviet of the Military

Revolutionary Committee, which was in fact dominated by

the Bolsheviks, to carry out the actual takeover of

Petrograd.

In other words, this Revolution was a minority military

action, not a mass event like the one that occurred in

February, or in 1905, for that matter. To be more precise,

what did occur was an amateur police operation of the

Military Revolutionary Committee, some sailors of the Baltic

fleet and a handful of Red Guards to take over the nerve-

centers of the capital on the night of October 24th. The

Petrograd proletariat and the city's military garrison

remained overwhelmingly neutral. Because there were no

forces to fight for the Provisional Government, the

Bolsheviks had almost nothing to overthrow. As Lenin

himself put it, the Party "found power lying in the streets

and simply picked it up."

Thus the strategy that Lenin had embraced in his APRIL

THESES paid off in the October seizure of power. Lenin, the

Bolshevik leader, hitherto unknown to most Russians as well

as the outside world, suddenly found himself the chairman

of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet

Republic, a government that was in fact little more than the

Bolshevik Party in power. This new power immediately

issued two decrees. The first, "On Peace," called for a

negotiated end to the war. What this really meant was

Russia's unilateral withdrawal from the conflict. The second,

"On Land," socialized gentry and state properties. What this

implied was an endorsement of the already accomplished

agrarian revolution. As Lenin put it to Trotsky on the night of

the coup, "it makes the head swim."

Our sense of wonder at the Bolshevik victory has lingered in

the historiography ever since, where it has produced

problems of interpretation The problem arises from the

facts. First, that the Bolshevik Party was largely Lenin's

personal creation and second, that his personal insistence

on armed insurrection was the driving force which led up to

the October coup. However, does all this mean that without

Lenin there would have been no Red October and hence no

Soviet regime?

This rather extreme version of the "great man" theory has

often been advanced. Even Trotsky, though committed as a

Marxist to the social logic of history, comes close to holding

Lenin indispensable to Bolshevik victory. Trotsky may have

wished to be more cautious. The events of 1917 -- from

Order Number One in February to the emergence of the Left

SRs in October -- show that even without Lenin there was

ample room on the Russian Left for an extremist party of

"revolution now." Consider that statement carefully. Before

October it was the case that Lenin's Party, although the

most hierarchical of all the Russian parties, was not as yet

the monolithic instrument commanded at will by its leader

that it later became.

Indeed, Trotsky's own historical role belies the overriding

importance he attributed to Lenin. In addition, Trotsky's role

also points to the fluidity of the Party in 1917. After all,

Trotsky abandoned the Mensheviks only in June 1917. And in

October, it was Trotsky who was directing the Bolshevik

seizure of power. Go figure! He even countermanded Lenin's

impatient directives in order to coordinate the Party

takeover with the Congress of Soviets, so as to enhance the

coup's "proletarian" appearance. Lenin, for all the impetus

he gave to the coup, had nothing to do with carrying it out,

since he was still in hiding when it began. Where Lenin was

more than truly indispensable was in his role, over the

previous fourteen years, as architect of the Party

organization. However, even in this domain, by 1917, there

were numerous little Lenin's who could have pursued the

same maximalist policies.

The maximalist strategy that Lenin worked out in the April

Theses would work only in the exceptional social

circumstances that the war had by 1917 created in Russia.

The central fact of that year was that the linchpin of the

over-centralized Russian Imperial system was removed.

From that point on, all subordinate structures in the country

began to quickly unravel. The army, the industrial economy,

the social structure of the countryside, and the

administrative system of the Empire, both in the Great

Russian provinces and among the border nationalities all

disintegrated. By the end of the year, Russia no longer

possessed any functioning, organized structures. The result

was a generalized void of power, an interregnum in all

aspects of national life. Thus, by the end of October the

wreckage of the Russian Empire was up for grabs,

vulnerable to whatever force with the will and organizational

capacity to take it over.

The dynamic of national disintegration began with the army

and was driven throughout the year above all by the war.

The policy of the Provisional Government was to prosecute

the war to a victorious conclusion at the side of its

democratic allies. The policy of the Soviet was to fight only

for a "democratic peace without annexations or

indemnities." Once discipline had been restored after the

work of Order Number One, the liberal-socialist coalition

government formed in April adopted a compromise war

policy. As a result, Kerensky's democratic offensive was

launched in June. This offensive, of course, ended in nothing

less than a rout. Army discipline was once again

undermined and fueled the Bolshevik thrust of the July

Days. And that event in turn led to General Kornilov's

attempt in August to restore Russia's fighting capacity by

sweeping away the Soviets. But this failed effort discredited

the army command and officer corps once and for all. After

August, therefore, the army simply melted away, with the

peasant soldiers trekking home to participate in the

partition of the gentry's lands. Thus, all the political crises of

the DUAL POWER, from April to July to August, were directly

caused by the army, and by the fall, the impact of these

crises on the army was such that the coercive power of the

state was destroyed. The name for such a situation is

anarchy -- the genuine absence of government.

In the course of 1917 all of old Russia's structures -- the

state, the army, the Empire, the local administration, the

economy and both the urban and rural societies -- came

apart simultaneously. Such a situation explains why, amidst

a state of generalized collapse, that there was no chance of

establishing a durable constitutional democracy. History

militated against it. Any government that would have tried

to intervene against this revolutionary process before its full

unwinding would have been discredited. Even if the

Provisional Government had found the resolve to

immediately convene a Constituent Assembly, to

unilaterally take Russia out of the war, and to give the land

to the peasants, this would have hardly had the desired

result. These were measures that critics later felt the

Provisional Government should have adopted in order to

stop Bolshevism. These measures were also, in fact, similar

to Bolshevik policy. They would have been revolutionary and

disruptive in their effect, and they would have only

deepened the anarchy without giving the Provisional

Government the new coercive means to master it -- means

that came quite naturally to the Bolsheviks.

The fact of the matter is that in 1917 the impetus for

disintegration was such that, once it had played itself out,

only an authoritarian, coercive solution was possible for

creating some new type or order. As the historian and leader

of the Kadet Party Paul Miliukov put the matter, by the end

of the summer the alternatives for Russia were either

Kornilov or Lenin. But since Kornilov and the forces of the

traditional order that he symbolized had no real power, only

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in a position to pick up the

pieces and to fashion a new type of order once the storm

had spent its force.

This new type of order would be the "dictatorship of the

proletariat" proclaimed after October as the vehicle for the

transition from capitalism to socialism. Drawing on Marx's

analysis of the Paris Commune, during the summer of 1917

in his book State and Revolution, Lenin had interpreted the

direct proletarian democracy of the workers' soviets as the

realization of a new "commune" state. As such, the soviets

constituted the basis of the coming dictatorship and the

new socialist state. Thus, although it is only amidst a

general process of national disintegration that the Russian

workers' movement could have acquired "world-historical"

significance, this broader process indeed received its

political and ideological meaning from working-class action

or, at the very least, from action in the name of the working

class.

It is for this reason that interpretation of the Russian

Revolution both in the East and in the West, has been

overwhelmingly concerned with the working class in relation

to the Bolshevik Party. This question is urgent because

whatever legitimacy the Soviet regime could once claim, in

its own view, depended on the ideological conformity of the

proletariat with the Party and hence, on the socialist

authenticity of October. How then to explain the coming to

power of the proletariat in October 1917? In fact, the

proletariat did not come to power. What came to power was

a political and ideological organization, the Bolshevik Party.

Yet, the historical myth surrounding Red October, is that of a

"revolution from below." A revolution led by the Russian

masses in the interests of the Russian masses. But our

narrative of the events of October have shown how nearly

absent the working classes of Petrograd were during the so-

called "ten days that shook the world."

The myth of proletarian October is the myth of the triumph

of the alienated and dehumanized masses over all their

sufferings and deprivations. In this historically logical

process, suffering is the criteria of authentic humanity. This

was as true for Marx as it was for Dostoevsky. And since

intense crisis makes suffering most acute, the war and the

social collapse of 1917 conferred on the humiliated and

offended of Russian life quintessential human status. For the

suffering of 1917 was no myth, but a most cruel, physical

and mental fact. In these circumstances, the modest

Russian proletariat could indeed appear in the eyes of its

self-appointed leaders, and in the eyes of many socialists

throughout the world, to be the universal class and the

bearer of the logic of history. Thus this myth became a

mighty empirical force, the indispensable launching pad of

the whole Soviet dream.

Incipit vita nova. Here begins the new life.