The Saviours of Russia (1918)

Editorial from the September 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

The hand of the capitalist is slowly but surely revealing itself in Russian affairs. It will be remembered with what haste the capitalist Governments rushed to congratulate their triumphant (as they thought) fellow thieves upon their overthrow of the monarchy. They did not then stop to lecture on the enormity of “internal dissention” in the midst of war. No, they tumbled over each other in their anxiety to deliver their congratulations — because the “victors” were of their own kidney.

They made a mistake, however. In the ultimate it proved to he more than the revolutionary capitalist class in Russia could do, once they had broken the tyrannical organisation which had kept the conscripted forces in subjection, to regain for themselves control of those forces. It was not for the want of trying that they failed. They soon got busy butchering soldiers who refused to go on with the war which they had not made, which they had never wanted, and which they realised could bring them no benefit. So the revolutionary capitalists, who were never for a moment strong enough to establish their authority over the forces and powers of State, were “recognised” and accepted by their fellow capitalists as the “representatives of the Russian people,” as the Russian people, as the natural successors, quite as a matter of course, to Bloody Nick and his crew. That they had no power as a Government made no difference.

How different, however, was the conduct of the capitalist Governments toward the Bolsheviks when the latter took the reins from the palsied grasp of the “triumphant bourgeoisie"! Their accredited envoys received only “unofficial recognition, for the purpose of communication.” The London representative was even permitted to be turned out of his office, and the law was strained order to prevent that Russian representative enjoying the use of the premises he was in perfectly legal possession of.

Thus it is seen that from the very commencement the capitalist governments have been bitterly antagonistic to the Bolshevik Government. They have refused to receive their accredited representatives, they have declined to recognise them as a government, they have deprived their ambassadors or envoys (of course, they will quarrel over the terms) of the common means and conveniences for carrying on their work, even to the extent of interrupting their communications.

Nor is this by any means the worst. Fearful that if the Bolshevik enterprise should meet with success it might prove contagious, they have determined to crush it and restore their friends and allies, the Russian capitalists, to dominance. So we have a “league of nations” in being against the Bolshevik Government. Under the plea that they are going to save Russia from the Germans they invade the country at various points. “We come as the friends of Russia,” they declare, and disown any intention of interfering with “the internal politics of the country.”

But the shallow falsity of all these claims is quite easy to see. No efforts of the Allies in Russia can “save Russia from Germany,” for the force which they can send into that country must be expended, not against Germany, but against new enemies the allied invasion must necessarily raise up—the Bolsheviks themselves. Hence the effort of the Allies can only be on the one hand a provocative of further opposition to them, and on the other hand a subtraction from the forces operating in the regions where the question of the German exploitation of Russia really will be decided—in the main theatre of war, the West European front.

As to the claim that they go into Russia as “the friends of Russia,” this must be translated into “the friends of Russian capitalists” if it is to have any truth at all. It is only by the continued exploitation of the Russian working class that the Allied capitalists can ever hope to recover the many millions which they have advanced, both before and since the outbreak of the war, to Russia, with the object of strengthening her against Germany. It is only by setting up capitalist domination anew in Eastern Europe, that they can maintain that counterpoise to industrially advancing Germany, that thorn in the side of the double eagle, which is so necessary if they are to retain their place in the world markets. It is only by securing the downfall of the Bolshevik regime, by throwing upon that movement the odium of failure, that they can stave off their own demise, as a class proven to be useless, for any considerable period. These are the reasons which underlie their actions, which bring Allied soldiers to the Murman coast, call Japanese troops to Eastern Siberia, and turn even Chinese artillery on Bolshevik workmen.

Now with regard to the ludicrous statement that there is no intention of interfering with Russian internal politics. Everyone knows that it is openly admitted that one of the main objects of the Allies in invading Russia is “to save Russia from the Bolsheviks.” The capitalist Press has made no secret of it. Capitalist agents, both here and in Russia, have striven for it. In particular one may instance Dr. Harold Williams, when special correspondent to the "Daily Chronicle” in Petrograd, and since his return to this country. His filthy diatribes against the Bolsheviks leave no doubt as to their object—the overthrow of those against whom he inveighed.

What sort of game has been played is unwittingly revealed in an eulogy of Capt. Cromie which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” on Sept. 14th, wherein, after retailing some of Cromie’s activities in favour of the capitalist interests, it is stated that, he went to Petrograd and strove to hold the forces of “sanity and reason” together. Needless to say, in the capitalist view, neither sanity nor reason can reside in Bolshevik craniums, and to scheme their overthrow is not interfering in internal politics of course!

50 Years Ago: The Overthrow of Russian Czarism (1967)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The outstanding feature of the past month in the domain of public affairs is undoubtedly the ‘Russian Revolution’. That this is an event of some importance in the development of human society cannot be denied, but its importance is far less than, and lies mainly in an altogether different direction from that which the capitalist Press of the whole capitalist world would have us believe.

Far from it heralding the dawn of freedom in Russia, it is simply the completion of the emancipation of the capitalist class in Russia which started in the ‘emancipation’ of the serfs some seventy years ago — in order that they might become factory slaves. The revolution's greatest importance from the working-class view-point is that it brings the workers face to face with their final exploiters.

[From the Socialist Standard April 1917 .]

Russia 1917: As We Saw It (2017)

From the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In March (February under the old Russian calendar) the Tsar was overthrown. The Socialist Standard saw it as a ‘bourgeois revolution’:

The outstanding feature of the past month in the domain of public affairs is undoubtedly the “Russian Revolution”. That this is an event of some importance in the development of human society cannot be denied, but its importance is far less than, and lies mainly in an altogether different direction from that which the capitalist Press of the whole capitalist world would have us believe.

Far from it heralding the dawn of freedom in Russia, it is simply the completion of the emancipation of the capitalist class in Russia which started in the “emancipation” of the serfs some seventy years ago – in order that they might become factory slaves. The revolution’s greatest importance from the working-class view-point is that it brings the workers face to face with their final exploiters. 

(April 1917)

Perhaps the most unexpected of the changes has been the revolution in Russia. Information published here is small in quantity and only of such kind and character as the master class choose to let us know, hence caution is necessary before arriving at conclusions based upon such news as we have. One of the most significant features of the business is the speed and unanimity with which the several governments and other supporters of the capitalist system of society have hastened to praise the Russian revolution, and to offer their congratulations and advice particularly the latter to the Provisional Government and the Workers’ Committee. The common theme of all these messages is the need for the more vigorous prosecution on the part of Russia of the war against the Central Powers.  So far as can be judged from the news published here, the replies seem generally to be favourable to these promptings, though the repudiation by the Workers’ Committee of the idea of annexation of territory as a result of the war appears to have somewhat staggered the other parties, who are fighting only for liberty, righteousness, democracy, and freedom.

All the information available, both past and present, shows quite clearly that the upheaval in Russia is not a revolution of the working class, clearly seeing its slave position under the old order and setting to work in an organised fashion to emancipate itself.  Far from this is the truth, we are sorry to say. It is but another example of the capitalists using the discontent and numbers of the working class in Russia to sweep away the Feudal rules and restrictions so strongly symbolised in the Czar and the Council of Nobles, and to establish a system of government in line with modern capitalist needs and notions.

(May 1917)

Russian Revolution: 1. The Road to October (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the other articles in the series, click on the following links: TWO, THREE, FOUR.

There was not one revolution in Russia in 1917, but two. Yet because history is written chiefly about the victors, historians usually know more of the second revolution than the first. 'This series of articles will analyse the events which gave rise to and followed from the October revolution, but we would be in error to regard the second revolution as the first's inevitable consequence.

There are numerous interpretations of the causes of the February revolution, ranging from Trotsky’s false claim that it was the act of workers who had swallowed the propaganda of the Bolsheviks to Miliukov’s absurd suggestion that the workers revolted because they wanted the Duma (the consultative parliament set up by Nicholas II in 1906) to pursue a more vigorous war policy. In fact, ideological preoccupations aside, the revolution can be viewed as a spontaneous act of resistance against the feudal autocracy of Tsarism by war- weary soldiers, starving workers and landless peasants. A secret police report written at the time clearly explains the situation:

. . .  the proletariat in the capital is on the verge of despair. It is believed that the slightest disturbance, on the smallest pretext, will lead to uncontrollable riots with thousands of victims. In fact, the conditions for such an explosion already exist. The economic condition of the masses, despite large rises in wages, is near the point of distress. .  . . Even if wages are doubled, the cost of living has trebled. The impossibility of obtaining goods, the loss of time spent queuing up in front of stores, the increasing mortality rate because of poor housing conditions, the cold and the dampness resulting from the lack of coal . . .  all these conditions have created such a situation that the mass of industrial workers is ready to break out in the most savage of hunger riots. (The Red Archive, Vol. 26, Chap. XXV, p. 14.)

The February revolution was an expression of different class aspirations: the capitalists longed for the liberty of the West, the workers wanted better conditions, the peasants wanted the land which they believed was rightly theirs; apart from these, the soldiers wanted the end of the war. The three Provisional governments set up between February and October were however unable to fulfil the needs of the Russian population. This was because their leaders waited in vain for the problems to be solved by a democratically elected Constituent Assembly. While the Cadets (the bourgeois constitutional democrats) and the social democrats waited for the masses to decide on the matters affecting them, the Bolsheviks stepped in and decided for everyone. How were they able to do this?

Three factors
Three factors primarily contributed to the Bolshevik success. The first was the Provisional government’s abysmal attempt to win the war, which lost it the support of those who had risen in February to bring about peace. The Bolsheviks, who were the only party to unequivocally expose the war as an imperialist exercise, had a powerful stick with which to beat the government of Kerensky and Miliukov. The disastrous failure of the June 18 offensive and the dangers presented by the attempted military coup by General Kornilov in August did much to accelerate this popular swing towards the Bolsheviks.

Secondly, the Bolsheviks were the most capable political organisers in the chaotic conditions then prevailing. The Leninist concept of the professional revolutionaries guiding the masses in a direction which the latter were too ignorant to perceive, while a travesty of the Marxist theory of revolutionary activity, was successful. The Bolsheviks were able to mobilise vast masses of people behind a disciplined vanguard, while their rivals—the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries—argued amongst themselves about the ‘best tactics’. In the face of war and chaos the workers sought new leadership; the Bolsheviks volunteered themselves as leaders.

The third reason for the Bolshevik success was that they offered everything to everybody. By demanding immediate peace, land for the peasants, workers’ control and soviet rule the Bolsheviks could play the role of the Father Christmas of Russian politics. These objectives were inconsistent and sometimes secretly rejected by their advocates; what mattered before October 1917 was political power: and for the Bolsheviks the end justified the means.

Party manipulation
The Bolsheviks aimed to convert the soviets from workers’ councils which put political pressure on the bourgeois government to revolutionary bodies through which the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ could be achieved. What made easier their conquest of the soviets was the increasing burcaucratisation of he soviet machinery: more and more, as the year went on, were the soviets dominated by their executive organs. The creation of hierarchies allowed Leninist ‘professional revolutionaries’ to occupy positions of authority without direct responsibility. As spontaneous self-expression declined, party manipulation grew. Large urban soviets began to control surrounding soviets. By the time of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in June the process of centralisation became national and a controlling executive was set up (two thirds of the members of which were provided by the Petrograd soviet). At first the disproportionate influence of the Petrograd Executive benefitted the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries but, as the year went on and discontent grew, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in Petrograd and so had control of the entire soviet network.

Their task was made easier by the fact that workers were outnumbered in the soviets by soldiers who were essentially peasants in uniform. These were the people who went over to the Bolsheviks in the second half of 1917; most experienced urban workers were more attracted by the programme of the Mensheviks, which was essentially a policy of trade unionism.

After Lenin’s return to Russia in April the Bolsheviks adopted his political thesis that ‘the bourgeois revolution should be turned into a revolution for the dictatorship of the workers and poor peasants’. After April they waged war on the other Left parties in the soviets, accusing them of being supporters of the Russian bourgeoisie. Many political theorists were attracted to the Bolsheviks by this prospect of creating socialism out of the backward Russian economy. But what did they mean by ‘the next stage of the revolution’? What did Lenin mean by socialism? Would Bukharin and the Moscow Bolsheviks agree with Lenin’s definition? Could the Bolsheviks control history or would historical conditions control them? These questions were provoked by the excitement of 1917.

Reformist aims

As the Bolsheviks used the soviets to realise their political ambitions, so they used the factory committees on the industrial level. After the February revolution the Russian workers did not set out to fundamentally restructure the economy. Their aims were mainly reformist, as can be seen from Marc Ferro’s analysis of 100 petitions from industrial workers to the central authorities in March 1917: 51 per cent demanded a reduction in working hours, 18 per cent called for higher wages, 15 per cent complained of insanitary conditions and 12 per cent demanded rights for the newly established factory committees. Ferro concludes that

. . . the workers sought to ameliorate their condition, not to transform it. (The Russian Revolution of February 1917.)

The factory committees were formed by workers after the strikes in February, their purpose being to put forward demands to management. At the end of May the Putilov workers called a Petrograd conference of factory committees which was used by the Bolsheviks to gain control of the new movement so as to counter the force of the trades unions. Lenin addressed the conference and a resolution ‘On Economic Measures to Combat the Chaos’ was moved by Zinoviev and overwhelmingly carried (297 votes to 21). The resolution was essentially a syndicalist demand for workers’ control—not the policy of the Bolshevik party, which was committed to state control. The contradiction between these two policies was to be discovered after October. The conference set up a central committee, dominated by Bolsheviks and under the chairmanship of the Bolshevik Derbyshev. So in the soviets the Bolsheviks had a machine to rival the power of the Provisional government and in the factory committees they were able to rival the more democratic trades unions.

The winning of the peasantry was completed by controlling the peasant soviets from their urban centres, by sending Bolshevik propagandists into the countryside with promises of land and bread, and by discrediting the Social Revolutionary leader Chernov who, after May, was Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional government. They were aided in their work by the split within the Social Revolutionaries and the failure of the government to redistribute the land.

Did the majority of Russian people support the Bolsheviks in October 1917? Without doubt, they did not. The majority of peasants still supported the Social Revolutionaries. Did the majority of peasants understand Lenin’s policies in October 1917? Certainly not. Many of them were deceived by lies, others were concerned with just one policy, but were ignorant of the others. Did the Bolsheviks have a coherent programme for establishing socialism in October 1917? No they did not. They were, as disagreements after October were to show, quite vague about what was to be done. The October revolution was from the very start a conspiracy led by an undemocratic party following in the tradition of Machiavelli.

Steve Coleman

(To be continued)

Easter, 1917: A Survey and a Statement (1917)

From the May 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spring still sees the murder machine of war carrying on its ruthless work. The toll of dead and wounded, of maimed and crippled, of the working class of the various belligerent countries only varies in its monotony by its increasing quantity. In other directions changes are rapidly taking place in the methods and constitutions of the different countries that would have seemed quite improbable a short time ago.

Perhaps the most unexpected of the changes has been the revolution in Russia. Information published here is small in quantity and only of such kind and character as the master class choose to let us know, hence caution is necessary before arriving at conclusions based upon such news as we have. One of the most significant features of the business is the speed and unanimity with which the several governments and other supporters of the capitalist system of society have hastened to praise the Russian revolution, and to offer their congratulations and advice —particularly the latter—to the Provisional Government and the Workers’ Committee.

The common theme of all these messages is the need for the more vigorous prosecution on the part of Russia of the war against the Central Powers. So far as can be judged from the news published here, the replies seem generally to be favourable to these promptings, though the repudiation by the Workers’ Committee of the idea of annexation of territory as a result of the war appears to have somewhat staggered the other parties, who are fighting only for liberty, righteousness, democracy, and freedom.

All the information available, both past and present, shows quite clearly that the upheaval in Russia is not a revolution of the working class, clearly seeing its slave position under the old order and setting to work in an organised fashion to emancipate itself. Far from this is the truth, we are sorry to say. It is but another example of the capitalists using the discontent and numbers of the working class in Russia to sweep away the Feudal rules and restrictions so strongly symbolised in the Czar and the Council of Nobles, and to establish a system of government in line with modem capitalist needs and notions.

Hence the welcome given to the revolution, not only by the capitalist governments in their official capacity, and also by their various hangers-on, like Hyndman, Kropotkin, the B.S.P., I.LP.. etc.

According to the report in the “Daily Telegraph” of 18th April. 1917, the Duma gave a great welcome to the decoy ducks of the British Government, Messrs. W. Thorne, J. O’Grady, and W. S. Saunders. These individuals were sent out by the Government as representatives of the “Labour” movement here, although not a single organisation of workers was consulted as to their views on the matter, nor was their choice asked in reference to a representative. The “Labour" organisations have been completely ignored in the matter, and the individuals referred to have been chosen by the Government because of their peculiar fitness to perform the dirty work required to be done.

America’s entry into the human slaughter whirlpool was easier to foresee. Huge factories equipped with expensive plant had been built to meet the Allies' demand for munitions of war. Owing to the increasing number of munition factories built here, and the extension and more complete organisation of those already existing; the home supply of munitions has increased enormously. This has meant a serious reduction in the orders going to America, with the result that vast amounts of invested capital are practically idle and unproductive from the capitalists’ standpoint. Moreover, the openly announced extension of the German submarine campaign against American vessels, as well as against others, means the danger of losing such cargoes as were bring sent over. To keep these factories in America fully employed and thus to continue the vast profits their owners have been reaping, it was necessary to find some market for their wares. The only course open to secure this end was for America to enter into the war and so create the market needed by her own demand for munitions. A more remote, but still very important factor, was the anxiety of the American capitalist class to be represented at the conference that will deal with the settlement of affairs at the end of the war. Their commercial interests, particularly in Asia, might be hampered seriously, or even excluded, from certain areas, unless they were present at the conference with powers equal to those of any of the other parties.

The chatter about defending the rights and liberties of humanity is just the usual cant and humbug which the capitalist class resort to whenever they think fit. It only needs to recall the treatment served out to the natives of the Philippines and, still more significantly, the way the various sections of the working claw were bludgeoned and shot down, and their wives and children starved, when the men were locked out or on strike, to show how much “freedom ” or 'humanity" counts against profits in America, as in every other country where the capitalist system of society exists.

In England both the B S.P. and the I.L P., while pawing resolutions in favour of peace at their annual conferences, remain affiliated to the “Labour” Party, which not only actively supports the war. but whose prominent members join in the scramble for the well-paid political jobs it has brought into existence.

At the I.L.P. Conference the action of Mr. J. Parker in joining the Government was repudiated, but Parker is still allowed to remain a member of the party on the plea of “toleration.” 

The fact that the actions of many other prominent members are quite as open to criticism as Mr. Parker’s may have something to do with this defence of treachery to the working claw. The chairman of this same Conference, Mr. F. W. Jowett, M.P., stated :

   “Whatever in the nature of protective armaments is necessary to keep the land of my birth free from an invading force I would without hesitation provide. For this purpose I should consider the self-governing^ colonies and the United Kingdom as one nation.” (“Labour Leader,” 12.4.1917.) 

This is just the same attitude as was taken up by Lord Roberts, Mr. Hyndman, Mr. Blatchford, and the “Daily Mail.” For “protective” measures, as every military authority agrees, includes attack as well as defence. Then why condemn Parker for joining the “Committee of Protection” called the Government, if Mr. Jowett is prepared to provide “without hesitation” (or with) the armaments, including, of course, the conscription of men, necessary for this “defence”? Let the twisters of the I.LP. answer—if they can.

At the beginning of the war the Socialist Party of Great Britain was the only organisation in the British Isles that stated the Socialist position toward this and all other capitalist wars. Now, in the midst of the upheavals taking place in various directions and the suicidal policy of further nations joining in the strife, we still stand by that position, still fight for the emancipation of the working class from the slavery of capitalism, without any regard for racial or geographical boundaries. At our Annual Conference—the third during the war, and well attended despite the inroads made in our ranks by the master class—no doubt or question as to the correctness or soundness of our attitude was heard. On the contrary, the experience of the period since August 1914 has but added fresh evidence in support of the need for Socialist understanding on the part of the working daw before they can march to their emancipation. Every new order under the Defence of the Realm Act, whether applied to military or civil purposes, whether for obtaining recruits for the Army or shortening the food supply for the family, shows with startling emphasis the immense weapon of control formed by the political machinery. Not until that weapon is torn from the masters' hands by the working class, with an understanding of their object and the organisation to achieve it, will there be any hope of peace on earth with happiness for all.

By our motto, “The World for the Workers,” we still take our stand, and continue to strike the note that has been the key to our actions since the Party was first formed, namely, “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working claw itself."

Editorial Committee. Socialist Standard

Exhibition Review: '1917 - Romanovs and Revolution' (2017)

Exhibition Review from the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hermitage Amsterdam is a branch of the massive State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and mainly displays works from its parent museum. This centenary year sees an exhibition ‘1917: Romanovs and Revolution’, which continues till mid-September. As might be expected, there is a lot of emphasis on Tsar Nicholas II, his family and his own political and military weaknesses and miscalculations. There are display panels, newsreels, paintings, original documents and historic objects (such as one of the swords used to execute the royal family).

For the rich and powerful, St Petersburg in the nineteenth century was a luxurious city, with shopping arcades and Art Nouveau-influenced designs, so it was culturally part of Europe. But the rest of Russia, with its vast impoverished peasant population, was completely different. The Russian press was tightly censored and it was left to poets and novelists to express new social and political ideas, often at risk to themselves; Dostoyevsky spent ten years in Siberia from 1849.

Newspapers were forbidden to mention the deaths of hundreds of people in a crowd disturbance and stampede at Khodynka a few days after the Tsar’s coronation in 1896. Over a hundred demonstrators were shot on Bloody Sunday in 1905; the Tsar and government responded with an anti-semitic campaign. The First World War saw the Winter Palace used as a military hospital; and the Fabergé company shifted from making expensive jewellery to manufacturing army and medical equipment for the war.

The February Revolution was initially sparked by protests on International Women’s Day, and led fairly quickly to the Tsar’s abdication, after which his family were imprisoned and eventually executed in July 1918; recent research has identified bodies discovered in the area as those of the Tsar and his family. The exhibition has relatively little material on the Bolsheviks and their takeover of power. There is a reference to ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and an astonishing claim that Lenin’s ideas were ‘far more radical’ than those of Marx, but there is no explanation of what this is supposed to mean, let alone any justification.

Also in Amsterdam, the Nieuwe Kerk was housing the 2017 World Press Photo exhibition, containing some unforgettable and tragic images, mostly of war and refugees. It closed on 9 July, but it will be displayed in many other locations, including the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh from 4 to 26 August. Or look at www.worldpressphoto.org to see many of the photos.        

Paul Bennett

The Bolshevik Revolution (1967)

From the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution is now with us, and again dramatic and romantic descriptions of the Bolshevik seizure of power will circulate. Lurid official paintings of the event, with Stalin well to the fore and Trotsky nowhere to be seen, will appear in the glossy magazines. In fact the events that took place in Petrograd on November 7 1917 (October 26 by the old Russian Calendar) were largely a noisy farce. What little bloodshed occurred was unnecessary, the result of muddle and hysteria.

The grand climax, the storming of the Winter Palace and the capture of the Provisional Government, had all the makings of a legend—the ultimatum, brought by two armed cyclists across the river from the fortress of St Peter and St. Paul, the opening of the bombardment from the fortress and from the cruiser Aurora, while the cruiser’s searchlights swept the city. Finally the Red Guards closing in to storm the place. All the time, of course, Lenin from the Smolny Institute was directing operations with an iron hand.

In reality the cruiser fired only blanks, while most of the shells from the fortress went anywhere but the Winter Palace. The defending troops had been melting away all day, and the remnants gave up without a fight. In the final scene the cabinet made a pathetic pretence of being in session when the Red Guards broke in and captured them. The real work of the revolution had lain in the months that had preceded it, and in the ruthless period of consolidation and repression that was to follow. On November 7 the only well organised body in Russia, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, took the power from the nervous hands of a government whose writ hardly ran beyond the committee rooms of Petrograd.

The overthrow of the Tzar, in the February insurrection, had revealed a country in a state of complete collapse, politically and economically. When the Tzar departed the whole machinery of government went with him. The completely unbending nature of the autocracy had made it impossible for any of the opposition parties to obtain real political experience; consequently nobody had any clear idea of what to do. All authority had centred on the Tzar, so with the monarchy gone loyalties shifted about and swung from one rallying point to another.

The army, the mainstay of the Tzarist State, had been broken by the unparalleled slaughter of the past three years. The economy was in ruins. Once the lid was off, the repressed grievances of the workers and peasants burst out in numerous acts of violence. It was predictable that the first organised body strong enough to rally substantial support would take control. That body was the Bolsheviks.

The revolution had been quite spontaneous and unplanned, and while the victorious soldiers and workers thronged the streets there emerged what has become known as the dual power. Two centres of power arose in opposite wings of the Tauride Palace, both of them relics of the 1905 revolution.

One was the State Duma or Parliament, which was the only institution of the old autocratic government to survive. It had been very limited in its powers, it was based on an extremely restricted electorate, and had been set up as a sop to revolutionary feelings in 1905. Like the Parliaments in Tudor England it was called only when there was trouble such as the outbreak of war, and very little notice had been taken of it. The Duma was to become the nucleus of the new Provisional Government. Its members were drawn from the landowning and embroyo capitalist classes, and its principal party was the Constitutional Democrats or Kadets. The Kadets had also come into being in 1905, and they favoured a Constitutional Monarchy. They were “progressive liberals”, but in any other place they would have been considered extreme reactionaries.

The other body was the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies that had been set up in imitation of 1905. Soviet is merely the Russian word for council. Its members were Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks with a few Bolsheviks and other minor parties. The Soviet held the real power, through the fact that the revolutionaries would take orders only from them. No train would run, no telegram would be sent, and nothing would be printed without the Soviet permission. The War Minister, A. I. Guchkov, in a letter to a general, wrote

The Provisional Government possesses no real power and its orders are executed only insofar as this is permitted by the Soviet of the Workers and Soldiers Deputies, which holds in its hands the most important elements of actual power, such as troops, railroads, postal and telegraph service. It is possible to say directly that the Provisional Government exists only while this is permitted by the Soviet. (A Short History of the Russian Revolution, Joel Carmichael.)

But the great irony was that, although the Soviet held the real power, they refused to exercise it. They held the view that a bourgeois government must first take power and engineer a capitalist revolution before a Socialist Revolution could follow. This, combined with their inexperience and the suddenness with which they had been pitchforked into power, led them to bolster up the Provisional Government, rather than make use of the power they held. Such an arrangement would have been difficult in any circumstances; in the Russia of 1917 it was doomed to failure from the start, and served to paralyse things still further.

Meanwhile the peasants throughout Russia were taking the law into their own hands, seizing land and burning down manor houses. This led to a further deterioration in the supply of food. And all the time the war was dragging on. It was into this mess that Lenin, a master of political organisation and intrigue, arrived in April. He began, with the able assistance of Trotsky—his equal in these matters— to organise the Bolsheviks, a despised minority party, into the only effective body in Russia.

The Provisional Government was determined to carry on with the war and in mid-summer Kerensky launched the long awaited offensive. It was a ghastly failure; the Germans smashed through the Russian lines and the Russian army was at an end as a fighting force. Men began to desert in droves, flocking back from the front and giving rise to the much-quoted expression of “voting with their feet”. The workers and soldiers of St. Petersburg outdid the Bolsheviks in revolutionary fervour. In the July Days, the uprising that led to the temporary suppression of the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks had been dragged along, rather unwillingly, behind events. It was to cash in on these feelings that the slogan, “Bread, Peace, Land" was devised.

In late August the Commander of Petrograd, General Kornilov, attempted to march on Petrograd and overthrow the Provisional Government. He had massed troops half way between Petrograd and Moscow, and began a serious attack on Petrograd. But once again the unreliability of the army was apparent and the troops just melted away. The immediate effect was to swing opinion, that had built up against the Bolsheviks after the July Days, back towards them.

When the Bolsheviks finally moved in October, it was quick. In Petrograd it was soon over. In Moscow resistance was greater, and fighting lasted for over three days, but the result was never really in doubt. The take over was quite easy, but the Bolsheviks’ troubles were only just beginning. The events in Petrograd had happened so quickly that the newspapers on October 26 came out with leading articles written the night before, talking of the “isolation of the Bolsheviks.” The Bolsheviks immediately began to show their hand, and on the first day the entire bourgeois press was shut down.

This was the shape of things to come. The Bolsheviks had used the revolutionary fervour of the masses, but they had no intention of acting in a democratic way. The long awaited Constituent Assembly was called, but as it gave a large majority to the opponents of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved the same day. One by one the other political parties went down, and the murderous civil war, that was to rage for two years, was fought by as vicious an autocracy as ever the Tzar had been. In 1918 the Cheka, the new political police, were established and they soon acquired absolute powers. It was not in the gay, romantic, brave uprising of the legend, that Russia was to be changed, but in the grim butchery of the civil war, in the quiet killings in the cellars of the Cheka, and the famines which followed the attempts to collectivise the land. Workers will be well advised to study that grim chapter of history, known as the Russian Revolution, when they are confronted with glib invitations to solve their problems with violence.

Les Dale

Our Peace Manifesto: Why We Issued It. (1917)

Editorial from the July 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will be observed that elsewhere in this issue the Socialist Party of Great Britain have addressed a Manifesto to the proposed international Congress. We wish to state here briefly the reasons which have compelled the Party Executive to issue this pronouncement.

It will have struck our readers that since the war broke out the word "Socialism" has loomed large in the international Press, and that since the Russian Revolution this prominence has rapidly increased. Interested parties with chestnuts to pull out of the particularly fierce fire of current events, turn to that conglomeration of letters for an instrument to serve their various purposes. From the German emissaries Grimm and Scheidemann, to the British emissaries, Thorne and MacDonald, there is, all round, an endeavour to exploit the name of Socialism for the purpose of leading the working class in the different countries and their different local circumstances, to believe that the demands of the war-mad ruling class are in reality the demands of the people, expressed through their most democratic mouth-pieces, the Socialists. In Russia, we are told by the English newspapers on the morning these words are written, Socialist opinions dominate everything—a statement which is belied by the new Russian offensive. Kerensky as the Socialist saviour of Russia, whereas we know him to be merely the Russian Lloyd George, the embodiment of capitalist cunning, the capitalist revolutionary who brought the workers to the aid of the revolutionary capitalists under the cloak of Socialism, and now, under the same cloak, essays to save his capitalist masters from their wage-slaves on the one hand, and from their German enemies on the other.

In other countries the same tale is to tell. Everywhere the name of Socialism is being linked with the manoeuvres of the master class with the object of throwing dust in the eyes of their victims, and meantime the pseudo-Socialists are given ample opportunity to add their quota of support to the confusion, while the Socialists are denied the means of communication and therefore of effective expression.

In order to dissociate the Socialist name from the trickery of those who would besmirch it we place in record our attitude toward the war and show that the class-struggle basis of our organisation sufficed to keep our hands unsoiled by the blood of our fellow workers, and we ask any foreign comrade into whose hands our manifesto may come, to assist us by bringing it before the notice of the Executive of the Socialist organisation of his country.