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The Coming of October

As Kerensky’s authority faded, the strikes reached a newcrescendo in September. They revealed that the workers no longer believed in the capacity of the government to honour its pledges or in the willingness of factory owners to negotiate in good faith. The collapse of production, lock-outs, unemployment, violence, and social polarization profoundly changed the scale and tenor of the strikes. For three days in September, a strike by 700,000 railway workers paralysed transportation; in mid-October 300,000 workers struck at textile factories in Ivanovo and nearby communities; ‘workers’ included pharmacists as well as oil workers. Mood, not just numbers, is critical: the strikes often culminated in violent confrontations that accelerated the breakdown of law and order (already marked by a rise in looting, physical violence, and vigilante street justice). Koenker and Rosenberg point out that the strikes became the workers’ main ‘form of participatory politics’, ‘the central conduit of labour mobilization and, to a large extent, of management mobilization as well’. The workers’ animosities and aspirations provided the primary drive and justification for early Soviet power—even if, ultimately, the Bolsheviks were to subvert the workers’ democratic impulses and to transform their institutions (soviets, factory committees, trade unions, co-operatives) into instruments of mobilization, hierarchy, and control.

In a desperate bid to stabilize the situation, Kerensky manœuvred to form yet another coalition cabinet. To offset popular radicalism, he wanted representatives of ‘propertied’ society—the same circles of the Kadet Party and Moscow business circles discredited in the popular mind as Kornilov’s accomplices. In mid-September, the soviet and democratic circles sponsored a Democratic Conference to unite the representatives of ‘democracy’ and to guide Kerensky in forming a stable government. Rather than enhance the regime’s stability and legitimacy, the meeting proved a disaster: the delegates at first voted in favour of a coalition, but without the Kadets—an absurd proposition, since the Kadets were the only ‘bourgeois’ party disposed to ally with ‘democracy’. Later, despite Bolshevik opposition, on 25 September the conference voted for a coalition and thus paved the way for Kerensky’s final cabinet. The moderate left and centre thereby sacrificed their last opportunity to seize power or at least form a ‘unified socialist government’. Desperately seeking to end the crisis, the conference voted to summon another gathering—the Council of the Republic, or so-called ‘pre-parliament’. Intended as a surrogate for the constituent assembly and boycotted by the Bolsheviks, this weak body convened in October to hear gloomy ministerial and committee reports about the deepening crisis; it was the final sounding-board for the aspirations of Russia’s democratic revolution and its Provisional Government.

The Bolshevik Party meanwhile, debated the prospects of this ‘revolutionary situation’. The Kornilov episode had unleashed a new wave of radicalism, which was reflected not only in an upsurge of agrarian disorders and urban strikes, but also in pro-Bolshevik votes and elections in the soviets. Encouraged by this remarkable shift in mood, Lenin now revived the slogan ‘all power to the soviets’ abandoned after the July Days.

But internal dissension also rent the Bolsheviks. From various hiding-places Lenin bombarded the Central Committee with letters demanding that the party seize power in the name of the working class. His ‘Letters from Afar’ were a forceful blend of theory and practice, dogma and power. No blind believer in an ‘inevitable’ Bolshevik victory, Lenin insisted that the moment be seized, lest the Germans invade or strike a deal with Kerensky. Confronted with Lenin’s demand for an immediate armed uprising, party members revealed deep differences in their assessment of the situation. Two ‘Old Bolsheviks’, L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev, believed that a broad-based socialist coalition, not the Bolsheviks alone, should take power. But the majority (including Trotsky and Stalin) acquiesced in Lenin’s demand: on 10 October, by a 10–2 vote, the Central Committee secretly endorsed Lenin’s theses on seizing power. But it hedged this decision: without setting a timetable, it called for patient work among the troops and proposed to await the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets later in October to legitimize a seizure of power in the name of the soviets. Meanwhile, the Petrograd soviet made a tactical decision of great practical significance when it established the ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’. Ostensibly created to defend Petrograd against the Germans, this Bolshevik-dominated body, working under the cover of soviet legitimacy, became the Bolshevik command centre during the October Revolution.