Published 5 (18) July 1917
Editor’s note:
On 3 (16) July spontaneous demonstrations occurred and threatened to grow into an armed uprising against the Provisional Government.
At that moment, the Bolshevik Party was against any armed action, for it believed that the revolutionary crisis had not yet matured, and that the army and the provinces were not yet ready to support the uprising in the capital. But the movement had already begun and it proved impossible to stop it.
In view of the mood of the masses, the CC decided to participate in the demonstration so as to lend it a peaceful and organised character. At the time, Lenin was away – he was ill due to overwork and had gone to the countryside for a few days’ rest. He returned to Petrograd on the morning of 4 (17) July and took over direction of the events.
A mass demonstration had gathered outside the Smolny Institute, where tens of thousands of workers, soldiers and sailors stood ready and armed, demanding to carry out an insurrection. Lenin addressed the crowd, calling for “firmness, steadfastness and vigilance” (see ‘An Answer’).
More than 500,000 took part in the demonstration under Bolshevik slogans, including ‘All Power to the Soviets!’
With the knowledge and consent of the Menshevik-SR Central Executive Committee, the Provisional Government decided to suppress the demonstration with armed force. Military cadet and counter-revolutionary Cossack regiments were thrown against the peaceable demonstration of workers and soldiers. They opened fire on the demonstrators. Reactionary military units were summoned from the front.
On the night of 4 (17) July, the Bolshevik leadership decided to stop the demonstration in an organised manner. This was a correct step taken by the Party, which succeeded in retreating at a right time and preserving the main forces of the revolution from being routed.
Lenin wrote this text the next morning, 5 (18) July, before the forces of the Provisional Government wrecked the offices of Pravda.
* * *
“Drive nature out of the door and she will rush back through the window.” It seems that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties have to ‘learn’ this simple truth time and again by their own experience. They undertook to be ‘revolutionary democrats’ and found themselves in the shoes of revolutionary democrats – they are now forced to draw the conclusions which every revolutionary democrat must draw.
Democracy is the rule of the majority. As long as the will of the majority was not clear, as long as it was possible to make it out to be unclear, at least with a grain of plausibility, the people were offered a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government disguised as ‘democratic’. But this delay could not last long. During the several months that have passed since 27 February the will of the majority of the workers and peasants, of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, has become clear in more than a general sense. Their will has found expression in mass organisations – the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
How, then, can anyone oppose the transfer of all power in the state to the Soviets? Such opposition means nothing but renouncing democracy! It means no more no less than imposing on the people a government which admittedly can neither come into being nor hold its ground democratically, i.e. as a result of truly free, truly popular elections.
It is a farce, strange as it may seem at first sight, that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have forgotten this perfectly simple, perfectly obvious and palpable truth. Their position is so false, and they are so badly confused and bewildered, that they are unable to ‘recover’ this truth they have lost. Following the elections in Petrograd and in Moscow, the convocation of the All-Russia Peasant Congress and the Congress of Soviets, the classes and parties throughout Russia have shown what they stand for so clearly and specifically that people who have not gone mad or deliberately got themselves into a mess simply cannot have any illusions on this score.
To tolerate the Cadet Ministers or the Cadet government or Cadet policies means challenging democrats and democracy. This is the source of the political crises since 27 February, and this also the source of the shakiness and vacillation of our government system. At every turn, daily and even hourly, appeals are being made to the people’s revolutionary spirit and to their democracy on behalf of the most authoritative government institutions and congresses. Yet the government’s policies in particular are all departures from revolutionary principles and breaches in democracy.
This sort of thing will not do.
It is inevitable that a situation like the present should show elements of instability now for one reason, now for another. And it is not exactly a clever policy of jib. Things are moving by fits and starts towards a point where power will be transferred to the Soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago.
Written on 7 (20) July 1917
Editor’s note:
The offices of Pravda, having been wrecked on 5 (18) July by the Provisional Government, could not publish this article, which instead appeared two weeks later in Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker) on 19 July (1 August).
* * *
The more violent the slander and lies against the Bolsheviks these days, the more calmly must we, while refuting the lies and slander, reflect upon the historical interrelation of events and the political, i.e. class, significance of the revolution’s present course.
To refute the lies and slander, we only have to refer again to Listok ‘Pravdy’ of 6 (19) July, and to call the reader’s attention especially to the article printed below which gives documentary evidence that on 2 (15) July the Bolsheviks campaigned against the demonstration (as admitted by the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ paper). The article indicates that on 3 (16) July the popular mood exploded into action and the demonstration started against our advice. It shows that on 4 (17) July, in a leaflet (reprinted by the Socialist-Revolutionary paper Dyelo Naroda), we called for a peaceful and organised demonstration, that on the night of 4 July we passed a decision to call off the demonstration. Slanderers, continue your slander! You can never refute these facts and their decisive significance in every connection!
Let us turn to the question of the historical interrelation of the events. When, as early as the beginning of April, we opposed support for the Provisional Government, we were attacked by both the SRs and the Mensheviks. But what has reality proved?
What have the three political crises proved – 20-21 April, 10 and 18 June, 3-4 July?
They have proved, in the first place, that the masses are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the bourgeois policy of the Provisional Government’s bourgeois majority.
It is rather interesting to note that the ruling Socialist-Revolutionaries’ newspaper, Dyelo Naroda, despite its marked hostility to the Bolsheviks, is compelled to admit, in its 6 (19) July issue, the deep economic and political causes of the action of 3-4 July. The stupid, crude, infamous lie that this action was artificially created, that the Bolsheviks campaigned in favour of action, will daily be more and more exposed.
The common cause, the common origin, the deep common root of the three above-mentioned political crises is clear, especially if we look at them in their interrelation, as science demands that politics be looked at. It is absurd even to think that three such crises could be produced artificially.
In the second place, it is instructive to grasp what each one of them had in common with the others, and what was its specific features.
What is common to all three is a mass dissatisfaction overflowing all bounds, a mass resentment with the bourgeoisie and their government. Whoever forgets, ignores or underestimates this essence of the matter, renounces the ABC of socialism concerning the class struggle.
Let those who call themselves socialists, who know something about the character of the class struggle in European revolutions, think about the class struggle in the Russian revolution.
These crises are peculiar in the ways they manifested themselves. The first (20-21 April) was stormy and spontaneous, and completely unorganised. It led to Black Hundreds firing on the demonstrators and to unprecedentedly savage and lying accusations against the Bolsheviks. After the outburst came a political crisis.
In the second case, the demonstration was called by the Bolsheviks, and was cancelled after a stern ultimatum and direct ban by the Congress of Soviets; then, on 18 June, came a general demonstration in which the Bolshevik slogans clearly predominated. As the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks themselves admitted on the evening of 18 June, a political crisis would certainly have broken out had it not been for the offensive at the front.
The third crisis broke out spontaneously on 3 July despite the Bolsheviks’ efforts on 2 July to check it. Reaching its climax on 4 (17) July, it led to a furious outburst of counter-revolution on 5-6 July. The vacillation of the SRs and Mensheviks expressed itself in Spiridonova and a number of other SRs declaring for the transfer of power to the Soviets, and in the Menshevik internationalists, previously opposed to it, voicing the same idea.
The last, and perhaps the most instructive, conclusion to be drawn from considering the events in their interconnection is that all three crises manifested some form of demonstration that is new in the history of our revolution, a demonstration of a more complicated type in which the movement proceeds in waves, a sudden drop following a rapid rise, revolution and counter-revolution becoming more acute, and the middle elements being eliminated for a more or less extensive period.
In all three crises, the movement took the form of a demonstration. An anti-government demonstration – that would be the most exact, formal description of events. But the fact of the matter is that it was not an ordinary demonstration; it was something considerably more than a demonstration, but less than a revolution. It was an outburst of revolution and counter-revolution together, a sharp, sometimes almost sudden elimination of the middle elements, while the proletarian and bourgeois elements made a stormy appearance.
In this respect it is extremely typical that, for each of these movements, the middle elements blame both of the specific class forces – the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie. Look at the SRs and Mensheviks. They lean over backwards to frantically shout that, by their extremes, the Bolsheviks are helping the counter-revolution. At the same time, however, they admit again and again that the Cadets (with whom they form a bloc in the government) are counter-revolutionary. “Our urgent task is to draw a line”, wrote Dyelo Naroda yesterday, “to dig a deep moat between ourselves and all the Right elements, including Yedinstvo, which has gone militant” (with which, we may add, the SRs formed a bloc during the elections).
Compare that with today’s (7 (20) July) issue of Yedinstvo, in which Plekhanov’s editorial is compelled to state the indisputable fact that the Soviets (i.e. the SRs and Mensheviks) will “think over the matter for a fortnight” and that, if power were to pass to the Soviets, “it would be tantamount to victory for Lenin’s supporters”.
If the Cadets don’t stick to the rule – the worse, the better… [says Plekhanov] they themselves will have to admit that they have made a big mistake [by withdrawing from the Cabinet], making the work of Lenin’s supporters easier.
Isn’t that typical? The middle elements blame the Cadets for making the Bolsheviks’ work easier, and the Bolsheviks for making the Cadets’ work easier! Is it so hard to guess that if we substitute class names for political ones we have before us the dreams of the petty bourgeoisie about the disappearance of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? Isn’t the petty bourgeoisie complaining about the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? Is it really so hard to guess that no Bolsheviks in the world could have ‘created’ even a single ‘popular movement’, let alone three movements, if the deepest economic and political causes had not set the proletariat into action? Is it so difficult to guess that no Cadets and monarchists combined could have called forth any movement ‘from the Right’ if it had not been for the equally deep causes that make the bourgeoisie as a class counter-revolutionary?
Both we and the Cadets were blamed for the 20-21 April movement – for intransigence, extremes and for aggravating the situation. The Bolsheviks were even accused (absurd as it may be) of the firing on Nevsky. When the movement was over, however, those same SRs and Mensheviks, in their joint, official organ, Izvestia, wrote that the ‘popular movement’ had ‘swept away the imperialists, Milyukov, etc.’, i.e. they praised the movement!! Isn’t that typical? Doesn’t it show very clearly that the petty bourgeoisie do not understand the workings, the meaning, of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie?
The objective situation is this. The vast majority of the country’s population is petty-bourgeois by its living conditions and more so by its ideas. But big capital rules the country, primarily through banks and syndicates. There is an urban proletariat in this country, mature enough to go its own way, but not yet able to draw at once the majority of the semi-proletarians to its side. From this fundamental, class fact follows the inevitability of such crises as the three we are now examining, as well as their forms.
In future the forms of crises may, of course, change, but the substance of the issue will remain the same even if, for instance, the SR Constituent Assembly meets in October. The SRs have promised the peasants: (1) to abolish private landownership; (2) to transfer the land to the working people; (3) to confiscate the landed estates and transfer them to the peasants without compensation. These great reforms can never be realised without the most decisive revolutionary measures against the bourgeoisie, measures that can only be taken when the poor peasants join the proletariat, only when the banks and the syndicates are nationalised.
The credulous peasants, believing for a time that these beautiful things can be achieved by compromising with the bourgeoisie, will inevitably be disappointed and… ‘dissatisfied’ (mildly speaking) with the sharp class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for the implementation of the promises of the SRs. So it was, and so it will be.
Written 10 (23) July 1917
Editor’s note:
These theses were written by Lenin on 10 (23) July 1917, and defined the new tactical line of the Bolshevik Party in connection with the changed political situation following the demonstration on 4 (17) July.
* * *
- The counter-revolution has become organised and consolidated, and has actually taken state power into its hands.
The complete organisation and consolidation of the counter-revolution consists in a combination of its three main forces, a combination excellently conceived and already put into practice:
- The Constitutional-Democratic Party, i.e. the real leader of the organised bourgeoisie, has, by withdrawing from the Cabinet, confronted it with an ultimatum, thus clearing the way for the Cabinet’s overthrow by the counter-revolution;
- The General Staff and the military leaders, with the deliberate or semi-deliberate assistance of Kerensky, whom even the most prominent Socialist-Revolutionaries now call a Cavaignac, have seized actual state power and have proceeded to shoot down revolutionary units at the front, disarm the revolutionary troops and workers in Petrograd and Moscow, suppress unrest in Nizhny Novgorod, arrest Bolsheviks and ban their papers, not only without trial, but even without a government order. At present, basic state power in Russia is virtually a military dictatorship. This fact is still obscured by a number of institutions that are revolutionary in words but powerless in deeds. Yet it is so obvious and fundamental a fact that, without understanding it, one cannot understand anything about the political situation.
- The Black-Hundred-monarchist and bourgeois press, which has switched from hounding Bolsheviks to hounding the Soviets, the ‘incendiary’ Chernov, etc. has indicated with the utmost clarity that the true meaning of the policy of military dictatorship, which now reigns supreme and is supported by the Cadets and monarchists, is preparation for disbanding the Soviets. Many of the leaders of the SRs and Mensheviks, i.e. the present majority in the Soviets, have admitted and expressed this during the past few days, but true to their petty-bourgeois nature, they shrug off this formidable reality with meaningless high-sounding phrases.
- The leaders of the Soviets and of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, headed by Tsereteli and Chernov, have completely betrayed the cause of the revolution by putting it in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries and by turning themselves, their parties and the Soviets into mere fig-leaves of the counter-revolution.
Proof of this is that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have betrayed the Bolsheviks and have tacitly agreed to close down their papers without daring to tell the people plainly and openly that they are doing so and why. By sanctioning the disarming of the workers and the revolutionary regiments, they have deprived themselves of all real power. They have turned into the most loud-mouthed ranters who help the reaction to ‘divert’ the people’s attention until it is finally ready to disband the Soviets. It is impossible to understand anything at all about the present political situation without realising this complete and final bankruptcy of the SRs and Mensheviks and the present majority in the Soviets and without realising that their ‘Directory’ and other masquerades are an absolute sham.
- All hopes for a peaceful development of the Russian revolution have vanished for good. This is the objective situation: either complete victory for the military dictatorship, or victory for the workers’ armed uprising; the latter victory is only possible when it coincides with a deep mass upheaval, against the government and the bourgeoisie caused by economic disruption and the prolongation of the war.
The slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets!’ was a slogan for peaceful development of the revolution which was possible in April, May, June and up to 5-9 (18-22) July, i.e. up to the time when actual power passed into the hands of the military dictatorship. This slogan is no longer correct, for it does not take into account that power has changed hands and that the revolution has in fact been completely betrayed by the SRs and Mensheviks. Reckless actions, revolts, partial resistance, or hopeless hit-and-run attempts to oppose reaction will not help. What will help is a clear understanding of the situation, endurance and determination of the workers’ vanguard, preparation of forces for the armed uprising, for the victory of which conditions at present are extremely difficult, but still possible if the facts and trends mentioned in the thesis coincide. Let us have no constitutional or republican illusions of any kind, no more illusions about a peaceful path, no sporadic actions, no yielding now to provocation from the Black Hundreds and Cossacks. Let us muster our forces, reorganise them and resolutely prepare for the armed uprising, if the course of the crisis permits it on a really mass, country-wide scale. The transfer of land to the peasants is impossible at present without an armed uprising, since the counter-revolutionaries, having taken power, have completely united with the landowners as a class.
The aim of the insurrection can only be to transfer power to the proletariat, supported by the poor peasants, with a view to putting our Party programme into effect.
- The party of the working class, without abandoning legal activity but never for a moment overrating it, must combine legal with illegal work, as it did in 1912-14.
Don’t let a single hour of legal work slip by. But don’t cherish any constitutional or ‘peaceful’ illusions. Form illegal organisations or cells everywhere and at once for the publication of leaflets, etc. Reorganise immediately, consistently, resolutely, all along the line.
Act as we did in 1912-14, when we could speak about overthrowing tsarism by a revolution and an armed uprising, without at the same time losing our legal base in the Duma, the insurance societies, the trade unions, etc.
Published 15 (28) July 1917
Editor’s note:
After the dispersal of the demonstration on 4 (17) July, the bourgeois Provisional Government intensified its reprisals. It attacked the Bolshevik Party with special ferocity.
On the night of 4 (17) July, the Minister for Justice PN Pereverzev gave the press papers that purported to show that Lenin was a German agent. The press waged a hysterical campaign against Lenin the next morning, and the offices of Pravda, Soldatskaya Pravda and others were wrecked by government forces. Workers were disarmed, and waves of raids, arrests, beatings and pogroms followed. The revolutionary units of the Petrograd garrison which had taken part in the demonstration were disbanded and sent to the front.
On 6 (19) July, the Provisional Government issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. The leadership of the party convinced Lenin to go into hiding. He left Petrograd in the afternoon and hid with Zinoviev in safehouses around the city before making his way back to Finland on 10 (23) August, where he remained until October.
Proletarskoye Dyelo was the Kronstadt Bolshevik paper.
* * *
Comrades,
We have changed our minds about submitting to the Provisional Government’s decree ordering our arrests, for the following reasons.
From the letter of Pereverzev, the former Minister of Justice, published on Sunday in Novoye Vremya, it became perfectly clear that the ‘espionage’ ‘case’ of Lenin and others was quite deliberately framed by the party of the counter-revolution.
Pereverzev has openly admitted that he took advantage of unconfirmed accusations to work up (his actual expression) the soldiers against our Party. This is admitted by the former Minister of Justice, a man who only yesterday called himself a socialist! Pereverzev is gone, but whether the new Minister of Justice will hesitate to adopt Pereverzev’s and Alexinsky’s methods, nobody can venture to say.
The counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie are trying to create a new Dreyfus case.[1] They believe in our ‘espionage’ as much as the leaders of Russian reaction, who framed the Beilis case,[2] believed that Jews drink children’s blood. There are no guarantees of justice in Russia at present.
The Central Executive Committee, which considers it self the plenipotentiary organ of the Russian democrats, appointed a commission to investigate the espionage charges, but under pressure from the counter-revolutionary forces dismissed it. The Central Executive Committee refused to either directly confirm or to revoke the warrant for our arrest. It washed its hands of the case, virtually delivering us to the counter-revolution.
The charges of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘moral incitement’ to revolt proffered against us are of a very definite nature, but no precise indictment of our alleged crime is brought either by the Provisional Government or by the Soviet, both of which know full well that it is sheer nonsense to speak of ‘conspiracy’ in referring to a movement like that of 3-5 (16-18) July. The Menshevik and SR leaders are simply trying to appease the counter-revolution that is already bearing down on them too, by delivering a number of our Party members to the counter-revolutionaries in compliance with their demand.
At present there can be no legal basis in Russia, not even such constitutional guarantees as exist in the orderly bourgeois countries. To give ourselves up at present to the authorities would mean putting ourselves into the hands of the Milyukovs, Alexinskys, Pereverzevs, of rampant counter-revolutionaries who look upon all the charges against us as a simple civil war episode.
After what happened on 6-8 July, not a single Russian revolutionary can harbour constitutional illusions any longer. Revolution and counter-revolution are coming to grips in a decisive fashion. We shall continue to fight on the side of the former.
We shall continue to aid the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle as far as we can. The Constituent Assembly alone, if it meets, and if its convocation is not the handiwork of the bourgeoisie, will have full authority to pass judgement upon the Provisional Government’s decree ordering our arrest.
N Lenin
Written in mid-July 1917
Too often has it happened that, when history has taken a sharp turn, even progressive parties have for some time been unable to adapt themselves to the new situation and have repeated slogans which had formerly been correct but had now lost all meaning – lost it as ‘suddenly’ as the sharp turn in history was ‘sudden’.
Something of the sort seems likely to recur in connection with the slogan calling for the transfer of all state power to the Soviets. That slogan was correct during a period of our revolution – say, from 27 February to 4 (17) July – that has now passed irrevocably. It has patently ceased to be correct now. Unless this is understood, it is impossible to understand anything of the urgent questions of the day. Every particular slogan must be deduced from the totality of specific features of a definite political situation. And the political situation in Russia now, after 4 July, differs radically from the situation between 27 February and 4 July.
During that period of the revolution now past, the so-called ‘dual power’ existed in the country, which both materially and formally expressed the indefinite and transitional condition of state power. Let us not forget that the issue of power is the fundamental issue of every revolution.
At that time state power was unstable. It was shared, by voluntary agreement, between the Provisional Government and the Soviets. The Soviets were delegations from the mass of free – i.e. not subject to external coercion – and armed workers and soldiers. What really mattered was that arms were in the hands of the people and that there was no coercion of the people from without. That is what opened up and ensured a peaceful path for the progress of the revolution. The slogan ‘All Power Must be Transferred to the Soviets’ was a slogan for the next step, the immediately feasible step, on that peaceful path of development. It was a slogan for the peaceful development of the revolution, which was possible and, of course, most desirable between 27 February and 4 July but which is now absolutely impossible.
Apparently, not all the supporters of the slogan ‘All Power Must be Transferred to the Soviets’ have given adequate thought to the fact that it was a slogan for peaceful progress of the revolution – peaceful not only in the sense that nobody, no class, no force of any importance, would then (between 27 February and 4 July) have been able to resist and prevent the transfer of power to the Soviets. That is not all. Peaceful development would then have been possible, even in the sense that the struggle of classes and parties within the Soviets could have assumed a most peaceful and painless form, provided full state power had passed to the Soviets in good time.
The latter aspect of the matter has similarly not yet received adequate attention. In their class composition, the Soviets were organs of the movement of the workers and peasants, a ready-made form of their dictatorship. Had they possessed full state power, the main shortcoming of the petty-bourgeois groups, their chief sin, that of trusting the capitalists, really would have been overcome, would have been criticised by the experience of their own measures. The change of classes and parties in power could have proceeded peacefully within the Soviets, provided the latter wielded exclusive and undivided power. The contact between all the Soviet parties and the people could have remained stable and unimpaired. One must not forget for a single moment that only such a close contact between the Soviet parties and the people, freely growing in extent and depth, could have helped peacefully to get rid of the illusion of petty-bourgeois compromise with the bourgeoisie. The transfer of power to the Soviets would not, and could not, in itself have changed the correlation of classes; it would in no way have changed the petty-bourgeois nature of the peasants. But it would have taken a big and timely step towards separating the peasants from the bourgeoisie, towards bringing them closer to, and then uniting them with, the workers.
This is what might have happened had power passed to the Soviets at the proper time. That would have been the easiest and the most advantageous course for the people. This course would have been the least painful, and it was therefore necessary to fight for it most energetically. Now, however, this struggle, the struggle for the timely transfer of power to the Soviets, has ended. A peaceful course of development has become impossible. A non-peaceful and most painful course has begun.
The turning-point of 4 July was precisely a drastic change in the objective situation. The unstable condition of state power has come to an end. At the decisive point, power has passed into the hands of the counter-revolution. The development of the parties on the basis of the collaboration of the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties and the counter-revolutionary Cadets has brought about a situation in which both these petty-bourgeois parties have virtually become participants in and abettors of counter-revolutionary butchery. As the struggle between parties developed, the unreasoning trust which the petty bourgeoisie put in the capitalists led to their deliberate support of the counter-revolutionaries. The development of party relations has completed its cycle. On 27 February, all classes found themselves united against the monarchy. After 4 July, the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, working hand in glove with the monarchists and the Black Hundreds, secured the support of the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, partly by intimidating them, and handed over real state power to the Cavaignacs, the military gang, who are shooting insubordinate soldiers at the front and smashing the Bolsheviks in Petrograd.
The slogan calling for the transfer of state power to the Soviets would now sound quixotic or mocking. Objectively it would be deceiving the people; it would be fostering in them the delusion that even now it is enough for the Soviets to want to take power, or to pass such a decision, for power to be theirs, that there are still parties in the Soviets which have not been tainted by abetting the butchers, that it is possible to undo what has been done.
It would be a profound error to think that the revolutionary proletariat is capable of ‘refusing’ to support the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks against the counter-revolution by way of ‘revenge’, so to speak, for the support they gave in smashing the Bolsheviks, in shooting down soldiers at the front and in disarming the workers. First, this would be applying philistine conceptions of morality to the proletariat (since, for the good of the cause, the proletariat will always support not only the vacillating petty bourgeoisie but even the big bourgeoisie); secondly – and that is the important thing – it would be a philistine attempt to obscure the political substance of the situation by ‘moralising’.
And the political substance is that power can no longer be taken peacefully. It can be obtained only by winning a decisive struggle against those actually in power at the moment, namely, the military gang, the Cavaignacs, who are relying for support on the reactionary troops brought to Petrograd and on the Cadets and monarchists.
The substance of the situation is that these new holders of state power can be defeated only by the revolutionary masses, who, to be brought into motion, must not only be led by the proletariat, but must also turn their backs on the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, which have betrayed the cause of the revolution.
Those who introduce philistine morals into politics reason as follows: let us assume that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks did commit an ‘error’ in supporting the Cavaignacs, who are disarming the proletariat and the revolutionary regiments; still, they must be given a chance to ‘rectify’ their ‘error’; the rectification of the ‘error’ ‘should not be made difficult’ for them; the swing of the petty bourgeoisie towards the workers should be facilitated. Such reasoning would be childishly naive or simply stupid, if not a new deception of the workers. For the swing of the petty-bourgeois masses towards the workers would mean, and could only mean, that these masses had turned their backs upon the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties could now rectify their ‘error’ only by denouncing Tsereteli, Chernov, Dan and Rakitnikov as the butchers’ aides. We are wholly and unconditionally in favour of their ‘error’ being ‘rectified’ in this way…
We said that the fundamental issue of revolution is the issue of power. We must add that it is revolutions that show us at every step how the question of where actual power lies is obscured, and reveal the divergence between formal and real power. That is one of the chief characteristics of every revolutionary period. It was not clear in March and April 1917 whether real power was in the hands of the government or the Soviet.
Now, however, it is particularly important for class-conscious workers to soberly face the fundamental issue of revolution, namely, who holds state power at the moment? Consider its material manifestations, do not mistake words for deeds, and you will have no difficulty in finding the answer.
Friedrich Engels once wrote the state is primarily contingents of armed men with material adjuncts, such as prisons.[3] Now it is the military cadets and the reactionary Cossacks, who have been specially brought to Petrograd, those who are keeping Kamenev and the others in prison, who closed down Pravda, who disarmed the workers and a certain section of the soldiers, who are shooting down an equally certain section of the soldiers, who are shooting down an equally certain section of troops in the army. These butchers are the real power. The Tseretelis and Chernovs are ministers without power, puppet Ministers, leaders of parties that support the butchery. That is a fact. And the fact is no less true because Tsereteli and Chernov themselves probably ‘do not approve’ of the butchery, or because their papers timidly dissociate themselves from it. Such changes of political garb change nothing in substance.
The newspaper of 150,000 Petrograd voters has been closed down. The military cadets on 6 (19) July killed the worker Voinov for carrying Listok ‘Pravdy’ out of the printers’. Isn’t that butchery? Isn’t that the handiwork of Cavaignacs? But neither the government nor the Soviets are to ‘blame’ for this, they may tell us.
So much the worse for the government and the Soviets, we reply; for that means that they are mere figureheads, puppets, and that real power is not in their hands.
Primarily, and above all, the people must know the truth – they must know who actually wields state power. The people must be told the whole truth, namely, that power is in the hands of a military clique of Cavaignacs (Kerensky, certain generals, officers, etc.), who are supported by the bourgeois class headed by the Cadet Party, and by all the monarchists, acting through the Black Hundred papers, Novoye Vremya, Zhivoye Slovo, etc., etc.
That power must be overthrown. Unless this is done, all talk of fighting the counter-revolution is so much phrase-mongering, ‘self-deception and deception of the people’.
That power now has the support both of the Tseretelis and Chernovs in the Cabinet and of their parties. We must explain to the people the butcher’s role they are playing and the fact that such a ‘finale’ for these parties was inevitable after their ‘errors’ of 21 April, 5 May, 9 June and 4 July and after their approval of the policy of an offensive, a policy which went nine-tenths of the way to predetermining the victory of the Cavaignacs in July.
All agitational work among the people must be reorganised to ensure that it takes account of the specific experience of the present revolution, and particularly of the July Days, i.e. that it clearly points to the real enemy of the people, the military clique, the Cadets and the Black Hundreds, and that it definitely unmasks the petty-bourgeois parties, the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, which played and are playing the part of butchers’ aides.
All agitational work among the people must be reorganised so as to make clear that it is absolutely hopeless to expect the peasants to obtain land as long as the power of the military clique has not been overthrown, and as long as the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties have not been exposed and deprived of the people’s trust. That would be a very long and arduous process under the ‘normal’ conditions of capitalist development, but both the war and economic disruption will tremendously accelerate it. These are ‘accelerators’ that may make a month or even a week equal to a year.
Two objections may perhaps be advanced against what has been said above: first, that to speak now of a decisive struggle is to encourage sporadic action, which would only benefit the counter-revolutionaries; second, that their overthrow would still mean transferring power to the Soviets.
In answer to the first objection, we say: the workers of Russia are already class-conscious enough not to yield to provocation at a moment which is obviously unfavourable to them. It is indisputable that for them to take action and offer resistance at the moment would mean aiding the counter-revolutionaries. It is also indisputable that a decisive struggle will be possible only in the event of a new revolutionary upsurge in the very depths of the masses. But it is not enough to speak in general terms of a revolutionary upsurge, of the rising tide of revolution, of aid by the West-European workers, and so forth; we must draw a definite conclusion from our past, from the lessons we have been given. And that will lead us to the slogan of a decisive struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, who have seized power.
The second objection also amounts to a substitution of arguments of too general a character for concrete realities. No one, no force, can overthrow the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries except the revolutionary proletariat. Now, after the experience of July 1917, it is the revolutionary proletariat that must independently take over state power. Without that the victory of the revolution is impossible. The only solution is for power to be in the hands of the proletariat, and for the latter to be supported by the poor peasants or semi-proletarians. And we have already indicated the factors that can enormously accelerate this solution.
Soviets may appear in this new revolution, and indeed are bound to, but not the present Soviets, not organs collaborating with the bourgeoisie, but organs of revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. It is true that even then we shall be in favour of building the whole state on the model of the Soviets. It is not a question of Soviets in general, but of combating the present counter-revolution and the treachery of the present Soviets.
The substitution of the abstract for the concrete is one of the greatest and most dangerous sins in a revolution. The present Soviets have failed, have suffered complete defeat, because they are dominated by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. At the moment these Soviets are like sheep brought to the slaughterhouse and bleating pitifully under the knife. The Soviets at present are powerless and helpless against the triumphant and triumphing counter-revolution. The slogan calling for the transfer of power to the Soviets might be construed as a ‘simple’ appeal for the transfer of power to the present Soviets, and to say that, to appeal for it, would now mean deceiving the people. Nothing is more dangerous than deceit.
The cycle of development of the class and party struggle in Russia from 27 February to 4 July is complete. A new cycle is beginning, one that involves not the old classes, not the old parties, not the old Soviets, but classes, parties and Soviets rejuvenated in the fire of struggle, tempered, schooled and refashioned by the process of the struggle. We must look forward, not backward. We must operate not with the old, but with the new, post-July, class and party categories. We must, at the beginning of the new cycle, proceed from the triumphant bourgeois counter-revolution,which triumphed because the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks compromised with it, and which can be defeated only by the revolutionary proletariat. Of course, in this new cycle there will be many and various stages, both before the complete victory of the counter-revolution and the complete defeat (without a struggle) of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and before a new upsurge of a new revolution. But it will only be possible to speak of this later, as each of these stages is reached.
Published 19 July (1 August) 1917
In a farewell talk to members of the Committee of Journalists under the Provisional Government, Prince GY Lvov, former head of the Provisional Government, made some valuable admissions for which the workers will certainly be grateful.
What strengthens my optimism above all else, [Lvov said] are the events of the past few days inside the country. I am convinced that our ‘deep breach’ in the Lenin front is incomparably more significant for Russia than the German breach in our South-Western Front.
How can the workers not be grateful to the prince for this sober appraisal of the class struggle? They will be more than grateful, they will take a lesson from Lvov.
What an endless flow of fine words and infinite hypocrisy all the bourgeois people and landowners, as well as the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks trailing after them, pour out while orating against ‘civil war’! But look at Prince Lvov’s valuable admission and you will see that he very calmly appraises Russia’s internal situation from the point of view of civil war. What the paltry truth of the prince’s admissions amounts to is that the bourgeoisie, which head the counter-revolution, have made a deep breach in the revolutionary workers’ front. Two enemies, two hostile camps, and one has made a breach in the front of the other – this is how Prince Lvov sums up Russia’s internal situation. Let us, then, give Prince Lvov our heartfelt thanks for his frankness! After all, he is a thousand times more correct than those sentimental Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik philistines who imagine that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which inevitably becomes exceedingly aggravated during a revolution, is likely to disappear because of their curses and magic spells!
Two enemies, two hostile camps, and one has made a breach in the front of the other – this is Prince Lvov’s correct philosophy of history. He is right in practically discounting the third camp, the petty bourgeoisie, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. This third camp appears to be big, but, in fact, it cannot decide anything independently. That is clear to the sober-minded prince, just as it is clear to every Marxist who understands the economic position of the petty bourgeoisie, and as it is clear, lastly, to anyone who thinks about the lessons of the revolution’s history, which have always revealed the impotence of the petty-bourgeois parties whenever the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat became acute.
Even in war-time, the internal class struggle is far more important than the struggle against the foreign enemy. What savage abuse the big and petty bourgeoisie have hurled at the Bolsheviks for recognising this truth! What efforts to deny it have been made by the numerous lovers of alluring words about ‘unity’, ‘revolutionary democracy’, and so on, and so forth!
But when a serious and decisive moment came, Prince Lvov at once fully admitted this truth, openly declaring that a ‘victory’ over the class enemy at home was more important than the position in the struggle against the foreign enemy. An incontestable truth. A useful truth. The workers will be very grateful to Prince Lvov for admitting it, for reminding them of it, for spreading it around. And to express their gratitude to the prince, the workers will use their Party to see that the greatest number of working and exploited people understand and assimilate this truth as well as possible. Nothing is more useful to the working class in the struggle for emancipation than this truth.
What is this ‘breach’ in the civil war front which Prince Lvov is so triumphant about? This question must be dealt with very carefully if the workers are to learn well from Lvov.
The ‘breach in the front’ of the internal war on this occasion came, firstly, from the fact that the bourgeoisie had poured oceans of filth and slander on their class enemies, the Bolsheviks, and had shown exceptional tenacity in this really infamous and vile business of slandering their political opponents. It was the ‘ideological preparation’, if we may call it that, for the ‘breach in the front of the class struggle’.
Secondly, the material and really essential ‘breach’ came from the arrest and outlawing of people of hostile political trends, from the murder of some of them in the street without trial (Voinov was murdered on 6 (19) July for carrying publications out of the Pravda printers), from the closing down of their newspapers and the disarming of the workers and revolutionary soldiers.
This is what the ‘breach in the front of the war against the class enemy’ means. Let the workers think this over well so as to be able to apply it to the bourgeoisie when the time is ripe.
The proletariat will never resort to slander. They will close down the bourgeoisie’s newspapers after openly declaring by law, by government decree, that the capitalists and their defenders are enemies of the people. The bourgeoisie, in the shape of our enemy, the government, and the petty bourgeoisie, in the shape of the Soviets, are afraid to say a single open and frank word about the ban on Pravda, about the reason for closing it down. The proletariat will tell the truth instead of resorting to slander. They will tell the peasants and everyone else the truth about the bourgeois newspapers and why they must be closed down.
Unlike the petty-bourgeois – Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik – windbags, the proletariat will know very well what is actually meant by a ‘breach in the front’ of the class struggle and by making the enemy, the exploiters, harmless. Prince Lvov has helped the workers realise this truth. Thank you, Prince Lvov.
Written between 22-26 July (4-8 August) 1917
I
On 22 July the newspapers printed a report “from the Public Prosecutor of the Petrograd City Court” about the inquiry into the events of 3-5 (16-18) July, and about the prosecution of a group of Bolsheviks, including myself, who are charged with treason and the organisation of an armed uprising.
The government had to publish the report because this dirty business had already created too much of a scandal, having clearly been rigged, as every intelligent person realises, with the aid of the slanderer Alexinsky to meet a long-standing wish and demand of the counter-revolutionary Cadet Party.
But by publishing the report, the government of Tsereteli and co. will disgrace itself even more, for now the crudeness of the fabrication just hits one in the eye.
I left Petrograd on Thursday 29 June (12 July), on account of illness and did not return until Tuesday morning, 4 (17) July. But of course I assume full and unqualified responsibility for every single move or measure of our Party Central Committee, as well as of our Party as a whole. I call attention to my absence to account for my ignorance of certain details and for my allusion mainly to documents that have appeared in the press.
Obviously, it is documents of this nature, particularly if published in the anti-Bolshevik press, that the Public Prosecutor should have carefully collected, set in order and examined before anything else. But the ‘republican’ Prosecutor, who is carrying out the policies of the ‘socialist’ Minister Tsereteli, failed to perform his principal duty!
Shortly after 4 July, the ministerial newspaper Dyelo Naroda admitted that it was a fact that on 2 July the Bolsheviks had taken action in the Grenadier Regiment by campaigning against a demonstration.
Had the Prosecutor a right to keep quiet about this document? Had he any grounds for discounting the testimony of such a witness?
As it so happens, this testimony establishes the highly important fact that the movement developed spontaneously and that the Bolsheviks tried to put off rather than hasten the demonstration.
Furthermore, the same paper printed a still more important document, namely, the text of an appeal signed by our Party Central Committee and written on the night of 3-4 July. The appeal was written and sent to print after the movement, despite our efforts to check or rather control it, had ‘spilled over’, after the demonstration had become a fact.
The utter baseness and unscrupulousness of the Tseretelian Prosecutor, and his boundless treachery, show in his evasion of the question of exactly when, on what day and hour, whether before the Bolshevik appeal or after it, the demonstration began.
As a matter of fact, the appeal stressed the need to give the movement a peaceable and organised character!
Can you imagine a charge more laughable than that of ‘organising an armed uprising’, made against an organisation which on the night of 3-4 July, i.e. the night before the fateful day, issued an appeal for a ‘peaceful and organised demonstration’? Or take another question: what difference is there between the Prosecutor of Dreyfus or Beilis and the ‘republican’ Prosecutor of the ‘socialist’ Minister Tsereteli, a Prosecutor who keeps completely quiet about the appeal?
Further, the Prosecutor does not say that on the night of 3-4 July our Party Central Committee wrote an appeal to stop the demonstration and printed it in Pravda, whose offices were wrecked by counter-revolutionary troops that very night.
Further, the Prosecutor does not say that on 4 July Trotsky and Zinoviev, in several speeches delivered before the workers and soldiers marching towards the Tauride Palace, called on them to disperse once they had made known their will.
Those speeches were heard by hundreds and thousands of people. Then, let every fair-minded citizen who does not want his country to be disgraced by another rigged ‘Beilis case’ see to it that irrespective of party affiliation, those who heard the speeches make written declarations to the Prosecutor (keeping copies for themselves), stating whether Trotsky’s and Zinoviev’s speeches contained an appeal to disperse. A decent Prosecutor would himself have made such an appeal to the population. But how on earth can there be decent Prosecutors in the Cabinet of Kerensky, Efremov, Tsereteli and co.? And isn’t it high time Russian citizens themselves took care to make ‘Beilis cases’ impossible in their country?
By the way, owing to illness, I personally made only one speech on 4 July, from the balcony of Kshesinskaya’s Palace. The Prosecutor mentions it, and tries to set out what I said, but far from naming any witnesses, he is again reticent about eyewitness reports given in the press. I have by no means been able to secure a complete set of the papers, but still I have seen two testimonies: (1) in the Bolshevik Proletarskoye Dyelo (Kronstadt) and (2) in the Menshevik ministerial Rabochaya Gazeta. Why not verify the contents of my speech by these documents and by a public appeal?
The speech contained the following points:
- An apology for confining myself to just a few words on account of illness;
- Greetings to the revolutionary people of Kronstadt on behalf of the Petrograd workers;
- An expression of confidence that our slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ must and will win despite all the zigzags of history;
- An appeal for “firmness, steadfastness and vigilance”.
I bring out these particulars in order not to pass by the scant but truly factual evidence which the Prosecutor touched upon – barely touched upon – in such a cursory, indifferent and careless fashion.
However, the important thing is not the particulars, of course, but the overall picture, the overall significance of 4 July. The Prosecutor proved completely incapable of so much as even thinking about this.
On this question, we first of all have the highly valuable testimony given in the press by a rabid anti-Bolshevik, who turns upon us a veritable spate of invective and spiteful phrases. I refer to the ministerial Rabochaya Gazeta correspondent. He contributed his personal observations shortly after 4 July. The facts fully established by him show that his observations and experiences fall into two sharply differentiated parts. He contrasts the second with the first, saying that things had taken a “favourable turn” for him.
The first part of the author’s experiences is the attempt he made to defend the ministers amid a raging crowd. He was insulted, pummelled, and eventually detained. He heard extremely violent outcries and slogans, of which he recalls in particular “Death to Kerensky” (because he ordered an offensive, “sent 40,000 men to death”, etc.).
The second part of the author’s experiences, the one that brought a “favourable” turn for him, as he puts it, began when the raging crowd led him “before the tribunal” at the Kshesinskaya Palace. There he was released at once.
Those are the facts which prompted the author to turn a torrent of abuse upon the Bolsheviks. Abuse coming from a political opponent is natural, particularly if the opponent is a Menshevik who senses that the people, crushed by capital and the imperialist war, are against instead of for him. Yet abuse cannot alter the facts, which even as stated by a most rabid anti-Bolshevik testify that the aroused crowd went as far as to shout “Death to Kerensky”, that by and large the Bolshevik organisation gave the movement the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’, and that this organisation was the only one that carried any moral weight with the people and urged them to forgo violence.
Those are the facts. Let the willing and unwilling lackeys of the bourgeoisie shout and curse about the facts, accusing the Bolsheviks of ‘conniving with the mob’, etc., etc. We of the party of the revolutionary proletariat reply that our Party has always been and will always be with the oppressed whenever they voice their absolutely justified and legitimate indignation at the high cost of living, at the inaction and treachery of the ‘socialist’ Ministers, at the imperialist war and its prolongation. Our Party did its bounden duty by marching together with the justly indignant people on 4 July and by trying to make their movement, their demonstration, as peaceful and organised as possible. For on 4 July a peaceful transfer of power to the Soviets, a peaceful development of the Russian revolution, was still possible.
The crass stupidity of the Prosecutor’s fairy-tale about the ‘organisation of an armed uprising’ can be seen from the following: no one will deny that the vast majority of the armed soldiers and sailors who crowded the Petrograd streets on 4 July were on our Party’s side. Our Party had every opportunity to set about removing and arresting hundreds of high officials, taking over dozens of public and government buildings and institutions and so on. We did nothing of the kind. Only people so mixed up that they repeat all sorts of tall stories spread by the counter-revolutionary Cadets do not see the laughable absurdity of the assertion that on 3 or 4 July an ‘armed uprising’ was ‘organised’.
The first question the investigation should have put, if it had at all been worthy of that name, was “who started the shooting?” The next question should have been: “How many killed and wounded were there on each side? In what circumstances did each killing and wounding take place?” Had the investigation been anything like a real investigation (and not like a trouble-making article in the papers of the Dans, the Alexinskys, etc.), it would have been the investigators’ duty to hold an open, public cross-examination of the witnesses and then immediately publish the record of the interrogation.
That is what courts of inquiry always did in Britain when Britain was a free country. That, or roughly that, is what the Executive Committee of the Soviet felt it had to do at first, when fear of the Cadets had not yet completely numbed its conscience. We know the Executive Committee then promised in the press to issue two bulletins daily on the work of its investigating commission. We also know the Executive Committee (i.e. the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks) deceived the people by not keeping its promise. But the text of that promise has gone down in history as an admission from our enemies, an admission of what any fair investigator should have done.
It is instructive, at any rate, to note that one of the first bourgeois, rabidly anti-Bolshevik papers to carry a report about the shooting on 4 July was the evening Birzhevka[4] of the same date. And it is this report that suggests that the shooting was not started by the demonstrators, and that the first shots were fired against them!! Of course, the ‘republican’ Prosecutor of the ‘socialist’ Cabinet preferred to say nothing about this testimony from Birzhevka!! And yet this testimony of the utterly anti-Bolshevik Birzhevka fully accords with the general picture of what happened as our Party sees it. Had it been an armed uprising, then, of course, the insurgents would not have fired on the counter-demonstrators but would have surrounded certain barracks and certain buildings; they would have wiped out certain army units, etc. On the other hand, if it was a demonstration against the government, with a counter-demonstration by government defenders, it was perfectly natural that the counter-revolutionaries should be the first to shoot, partly because they were enraged by the enormous number of demonstrators, and partly with provocative intent. And it was just as natural the demonstrators should counter shots with shots.
Lists of the dead, though probably incomplete, were published, nevertheless, in a few papers (I think in Rech and Dyelo Naroda). The prime and immediate duty of the investigation was to verify, complete, and officially publish these lists. To evade this means concealing proof that the counter-revolutionaries started the shooting.
Indeed, even a cursory examination of the published lists shows that the two main and prominent groups, the Cossacks and the sailors, had each about the same number killed. Could this have been so if the ten thousand armed sailors who arrived in Petrograd on 4 July to join the workers and soldiers, particularly the machine-gunners who had many machine-guns, had been intent on an armed uprising?
Obviously, the number of dead among the Cossacks and other opponents of the insurrection would in that case have been ten times greater, for no one will deny that the predominance of the Bolsheviks among the armed people in the Petrograd streets on 4 July was enormous. There is a long list of relevant testimonies in the press from our Party opponents, and any fair investigating body would undoubtedly have collected and published all this evidence.
If the number of dead is approximately the same on both sides, this proves that the shooting was started by the counter-revolutionaries and that the demonstrators merely returned the fire. Otherwise there could not have been an equal number of dead.
Finally, the following piece of press information is exceedingly important: Cossacks are known to have been killed on 4 July during an open skirmish between the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators. Such skirmishes take place even in non-revolutionary times, if the population is at all aroused; for instance, they are not infrequent in the Latin countries, particularly in the South. Bolsheviks are also known to have been killed after 4 July, when there was no clash between excited demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, and hence when the murder of an unarmed by an armed person was really an act of butchery. Such was the murder of the Bolshevik Voinov in Shpalernaya Street on 6 July.
What kind of an investigating commission is it that does not fully collect even the evidence which has appeared in the press concerning the number of dead on both sides, and the time and circumstances of each killing? This is just a mockery of an investigation.
It is clearly futile to expect as much as an attempt at a historical evaluation of 4 July from such an ‘investigating’ commission. Yet this evaluation is indispensable to anyone wanting to maintain an intelligent attitude towards politics.
Whoever attempts a historical estimate of 3 and 4 July cannot shut his eyes to the exact identity of this movement and that of 20-21 April.
In both cases there was a spontaneous outburst of popular indignation.
In both cases armed people came on to the streets.
In both cases there was a skirmish between the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, resulting in a certain (approximately equal) number of victims on both sides.
In both cases there was an extremely sharp outburst in the struggle between the revolutionary masses and the counter-revolutionaries, the bourgeoisie, while the neutral, intermediate elements which inclined towards compromise were temporarily inactive.
In both cases the special kind of anti-government demonstration (its special features have been listed above) was due to a deep and protracted crisis of power.
The difference between the two movements is that the latter was much more intense than the former and that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, neutral on 20 and 21 April, have since got themselves into a tangle by their dependence on the counter-revolutionary Cadets (through the coalition Cabinet and the policy of taking offensive action), and so, on 3 and 4 July, found themselves on the side of the counter-revolution.
The counter-revolutionary Cadet Party brazenly lied even after the events of 20-21 April, shouting, “The shooting on Nevsky was done by Lenin’s men”, and, clown-like, they demanded an investigation. The Cadets and their friends then constituted the majority in the government and so the investigation was wholly in their hands. It was begun and abandoned, and nothing was published.
Why? Evidently because the facts in no way confirmed what the Cadets wanted. In other words, the investigation concerning 20-21 April was ‘smothered’ because the facts proved that the firing had been started by the counter-revolutionaries, the Cadets and their friends. This is clear.
The same thing apparently happened on 3 and 4 July and that explains the crude and glaring falsification used by the Prosecutor, who affronts all standards of reasonably conscientious investigation to please Tsereteli and co.
The movement on 3 and 4 July was the last attempt by means of a demonstration to induce the Soviets to take power. That was when the Soviets, i.e. the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks controlling them, virtually handed over power to the counter-revolution by summoning counter-revolutionary troops to Petrograd, disarming and disbanding revolutionary regiments and the workers, approving and tolerating acts of tyranny and violence against the Bolsheviks, the introduction of the death penalty at the front, etc.
Military, and consequently political, power has now virtually passed into the hands of the counter-revolution represented by the Cadets and backed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Now, a peaceful development of the Russian revolution is no longer possible and the historical alternative is either complete victory for the counter-revolution, or a new revolution.
II
The charge of espionage and relations with Germany is purely a Beilis case deserving only a brief comment. On this point, the ‘investigation’ merely repeats the slander of the notorious slanderer Alexinsky, distorting the facts in a particularly crude way.
It is not true that in 1914 Zinoviev and I were arrested in Austria. Only I was arrested.
It is not true that I was arrested as a Russian subject. I was arrested on suspicion of spying, the local gendarme having mistaken the graphs of agrarian statistics in my notebooks for ‘plans’! Obviously, that Austrian gendarme was quite on a par with Alexinsky and the Yedinstvo group. But it appears that I have been persecuted for internationalism more than anyone else, for I have been persecuted by both belligerent coalitions as a spy – by the gendarme in Austria and by the Cadets, Alexinsky and co. in Russia.
It is not true that Hanecki played a part in my release from the Austrian prison. Victor Adler helped put the Austrian authorities to shame. Poles helped, being ashamed that such an infamous arrest of a Russian revolutionary could take place on Polish soil.
It is an infamous lie that I was in contact with Parvus, that I visited military camps, etc. Nothing of the kind happened, or could have happened. Upon the appearance of the very first issues of Parvus’ journal The Bell, our newspaper, Sotsial-Demokrat, described Parvus as a renegade and a German Plekhanov.[5] Parvus is as much a social-chauvinist on the side of Germany as Plekhanov is on the side of Russia. Being revolutionary internationalists, we had and could have nothing in common with German, Russian, or Ukrainian (Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine) social-chauvinists.
Steinberg is a member of an exile committee in Stockholm, where I first met him. About 20 April or a little later, Steinberg came to Petrograd, where I remember him soliciting a subsidy for the exile society. The Prosecutor could have verified this quite easily if he had wanted to.
The Prosecutor’s argument is that Parvus is connected with Hanecki, and that Hanecki is connected with Lenin! But this is just a big swindle, for everyone knows that Hanecki had financial dealings with Parvus, but none with me.
Hanecki, being a tradesman, worked for Parvus or did business with him. But then a great many Russian exiles associated with the press have worked in establishments and institutions belonging to Parvus.
The Prosecutor’s argument is that business correspondence may have served as a screen for relations in the nature of espionage. One wonders how many members of the Cadet, Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties could be indicted for business correspondence according to this wonderful formula!
But since the Prosecutor is in possession of several telegrams from Hanecki to Sumenson (which have already been published) and since the Prosecutor knows in which bank, when, and how much money Sumenson had (for the Prosecutor has published a few figures of this nature), why shouldn’t he invite two or three office or business employees to take part in the investigation? It would surely take them no more than a couple of days to make a complete extract from all the business and bank records for him.
Hardly anything reveals the true nature of this ‘Beilis case’ as well as the fragmentary figures cited by the Prosecutor: within six months Sumenson drew 750,000 roubles; she has 180,000 roubles left on her account!! If you are going to publish figures, why not publish them all? When exactly, from whom exactly did Sumenson receive money “within six months”, and to whom did she pay it out? When exactly, and exactly what consignments of goods were received?
What could be easier than to collect these complete data? This could and should have been done in a matter of two or three days! It would have disclosed the whole round of business dealings between Hanecki and Sumenson! It would have left no room for the obscure insinuations the Prosecutor is making!
How low the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have fallen is shown by Alexinsky’s foulest and most infamous slander, paraphrased to read like a ‘state’ document by the officials of the Cabinet of Tsereteli and co.!
III
Of course, it would be extremely naive to regard the ‘judicial cases’ instituted by the Cabinet of Tsereteli, Kerensky and co. against the Bolsheviks as actual judicial cases. That would be an absolutely unpardonable constitutional illusion.
Having entered into a coalition with the counter-revolutionary Cadets on 6 May and having adopted the policy of an offensive, i.e. resumption and prolongation of the imperialist war, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks inevitably found themselves under the thumb of the Cadets.
Being captives, they are forced to participate in the filthiest Cadet deals, in the Cadets’ lowest and most slanderous intrigues.
The ‘case’ of Chernov is rapidly beginning to enlighten even the backward, that is, to corroborate our view. After Chernov, Rech is now denouncing Tsereteli as well, calling him a “hypocrite” and a “Zimmerwaldist”.
Now the blind will see and the stones will speak.
The counter-revolutionaries are closing their ranks. The Cadets form their basis. The General Staff, the military leaders and Kerensky are in their hands and the Black Hundred press is at their service. These are the allies of the bourgeois counter-revolution.
Foul slander against political opponents will help the workers to realise all the sooner where the counter-revolution is, and to sweep it away in the name of freedom, peace, bread for the hungry and land for the peasants.
Published 29 July (11 August) 1917
Now that the Cabinet of Kerensky, Nekrasov, Avksentiev and co.[6] has been formed, the gravest and most disastrous error Marxists could make would be to mistake words for deeds, deceptive appearances for reality or generally for something serious.
Let’s leave this pastime to the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who have already gone as far as to play the part of clowns around the Bonapartist Kerensky. Indeed, it certainly is buffoonery on the part of the Chernovs, Avksentievs and Tseretelis to start striking postures and uttering fancy words at a time when Kerensky, clearly at the Cadets’ bidding, forms something of a secret Directory composed of himself, Nekrasov, Tereshchenko and Savinkov, keeps quiet about both the Constituent Assembly and the declaration of 8 (21) July,[7] proclaims the sacred union of classes in his address to the people, concludes an agreement on terms unknown to anyone with Kornilov, who has presented a most brazen ultimatum, and continues the policy of scandalously outrageous arrests.
At a time like this, it certainly is buffoonery on the part of Chernov to challenge Milyukov to appear before a court of arbitration, of Avksentiev to shout about the futility of a narrow class point of view, or of Tsereteli and Dan to push through the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets the emptiest resolutions stuffed with utterly meaningless phrases, resolutions that call to mind the Cadet First Duma during its worst period of impotence in the face of tsarism.
Just as the Cadets in 1906 prostituted the first assembly of popular representatives in Russia by reducing it to a miserable talking shop in face of the growing tsarist counter-revolution, so the SRs and Mensheviks in 1917 have prostituted the Soviets by reducing them to a miserable talking-shop in face of the growing Bonapartist counter-revolution.
Kerensky’s Cabinet is undoubtedly a cabinet taking the first steps towards Bonapartism.
We see the chief historical symptom of Bonapartism: the manoeuvring of state power, which leans on the military clique (on the worst elements of the army) for support, between two hostile classes and forces which more or less balance each other out.
The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has reached the limit and on 20 and 21 April, as well as on 3-5 July, the country was within a hair’s breadth of civil war. This socio-economic condition certainly forms the classical basis for Bonapartism. And then, this condition is combined with others that are quite akin to it; the bourgeoisie are ranting and raving against the Soviets, but are as yet powerless to disperse them, while the Soviets, prostituted by Tsereteli, Chernov and co., are now powerless to put up serious resistance to the bourgeoisie.
The landowners and peasants, too, live as on the eve of civil war: the peasants demand land and freedom, they can be kept in check, if at all, only by a Bonapartist government capable of making the most unscrupulous promises to all classes without keeping any of them.
Add to this the situation created by a foolhardy offensive and military reverses, in which fancy phrases about saving the country are particularly fashionable (concealing the desire to save the imperialist programme of the bourgeoisie), and you have a perfect picture of the socio-political setting for Bonapartism.
Don’t let us be deluded by phrases. Don’t let us be misled by the idea that all we have is the first steps of Bonapartism. It is the first steps we must be able to discern unless we want to find ourselves in the ridiculous predicament of the stupid philistine who laments the second step although he himself helped to take the first.
It would now be nothing short of stupid philistinism to entertain constitutional illusions, such as, for instance, that the present Cabinet is probably more Left than all the preceding ones (see Izvestia), that well-meaning criticism by the Soviets could rectify the errors of the government, that the arbitrary arrests and suppression of newspapers were isolated incidents which, it is to be hoped, will never recur, or that Zarudny is an honest man and that in republican and democratic Russia a fair trial is possible and everyone should appear at it, and so on, and so forth.
The stupidity of these constitutional philistine illusions is too obvious to require special refutation.
The struggle against the bourgeois counter-revolution demands soberness and the ability to see and speak of things as they are.
Bonapartism in Russia is no accident but a natural product of the evolution of the class struggle in a petty-bourgeois country with a considerably developed capitalism and a revolutionary proletariat. Historical stages like 20-21 April, 6 May, 9-10 June, 18-19 June and 3-5 July are landmarks which show clearly how preparations for Bonapartism proceeded. It would be a very big mistake to think that a democratic situation rules out Bonapartism. On the contrary, it is exactly in a situation like this (the history of France has confirmed it twice) that Bonapartism emerges, given a certain relationship between classes and their struggle.
However, to recognise the inevitability of Bonapartism does not at all mean forgetting the inevitability of its downfall.
If we only said the counter-revolution had temporarily gained the upper hand here in Russia we should be dodging the issue.
If we analysed the origin of Bonapartism and, fearlessly facing the truth, told the working class and the whole people that the beginning of Bonapartism is a fact, we should thereby start a real and stubborn struggle to overthrow Bonapartism, a struggle waged on a large political scale and based on far-reaching class interests.
The Russian Bonapartism of 1917 differs from the beginnings of French Bonapartism in 1799 and 1849 in several respects, such as the fact that not a single important task of the revolution has been accomplished here. The struggle to settle the agrarian and the national questions is only just gathering momentum.
Kerensky and the counter-revolutionary Cadets who use him as a pawn can neither convoke the Constituent Assembly on the appointed date, nor postpone it, without in both cases promoting the revolution. And the catastrophe engendered by the prolongation of the imperialist war keeps on approaching with even greater force and speed than ever.
The advance contingents of the Russian proletariat succeeded in emerging from our June and July Days without losing too much blood. The proletarian party has every opportunity to choose the tactics and form, or forms, of organisation that will in any circumstances prevent unexpected (seemingly unexpected) Bonapartist persecutions from cutting short its existence and its regular messages to the people.
Let the Party loudly and clearly tell the people the whole truth that Bonapartism is beginning; that the ‘new’ government of Kerensky, Avksentiev and co. is merely a screen for the counter-revolutionary Cadets and the military clique which is in power at present; that the people can get no peace, the peasants no land, the workers no eight-hour day and the hungry no bread unless the counter-revolution is completely stamped out. Let the Party say so, and every step in the march of events will bear it out.
With remarkable speed Russia has gone through a whole epoch in which the majority of the people put their faith in the petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. And now the majority of the working people are beginning to pay heavily for their credulity.
All indications are that the march of events is continuing at a very fast pace and that the country is approaching the next epoch, when the majority of the working people will have to entrust their fate to the revolutionary proletariat. The revolutionary proletariat will take power and begin a socialist revolution; despite all the difficulties and possible zigzags of development, it will draw the workers of all the advanced countries into the revolution and will defeat both war and capitalism.
Written at the end of July; Afterword written 6 (19) September 1917
Every revolution means a sharp turn in the lives of a vast number of people. Unless the time is ripe for such a turn, no real revolution can take place. And just as any turn in the life of an individual teaches him a great deal and brings rich experience and great emotional stress, so a revolution teaches an entire people very rich and valuable lessons in a short space of time.
During a revolution, millions and tens of millions of people learn in a week more than they do in a year of ordinary, somnolent life. For at the time of a sharp turn in the life of an entire people it becomes particularly clear what aims the various classes of the people are pursuing, what strength they possess, and what methods they use.
Every class-conscious worker, soldier and peasant should ponder thoroughly over the lessons of the Russian revolution, especially now, at the end of July, when it is clear that the first phase of our revolution has failed.
I
Let us see, in fact, what the workers and peasants were striving for when they made the revolution. What did they expect of the revolution? As we know, they expected liberty, peace, bread and land.
But what do we see now?
Instead of liberty, the old tyranny is coming back. The death penalty is being introduced for the soldiers at the front.[8] Peasants are prosecuted for the unauthorised seizure of landed estates. Printing presses of workers’ newspapers are wrecked. Workers’ newspapers are closed down without trial. Bolsheviks are arrested, often without any charge or upon blatantly trumped-up charges.
It may be argued that the persecution of Bolsheviks does not constitute a violation of freedom, for only certain individuals are being prosecuted and on certain charges. Such an argument, however, would be a deliberate and obvious lie; for how can anyone wreck printing presses and close down newspapers for the crimes of individuals, even if these charges were proved and established by a court of law? It would be a different thing if the government had legally declared the whole party of the Bolsheviks, their very trend and views, to be criminal. But everybody knows that the government of free Russia could not, and did not, do anything of the kind.
What chiefly exposes the libellous character of the charges against the Bolsheviks is that the newspapers of the landowners and capitalists furiously abused the Bolsheviks for their struggle against the war and against the landowners and capitalists, and openly demanded the arrest and prosecution of the Bolsheviks even when not a single charge against a single Bolshevik had been trumped up.
The people want peace. Yet the revolutionary government of free Russia has resumed the war of conquest on the basis of those very same secret treaties which ex-Tsar Nicholas II concluded with the British and French capitalists so that the Russian capitalists might plunder other nations. Those secret treaties remain unpublished. The government of free Russia resorted to subterfuges, and to this day has not proposed a just peace to all nations.
There is no bread. Famine is again drawing near. Everybody sees that the capitalists and the rich are unscrupulously cheating the treasury on war deliveries (the war is now costing the nation 50 million roubles daily), that they are raking in fabulous profits through high prices, while nothing whatsoever has been done to establish effective control by the workers over the production and distribution of goods. The capitalists are becoming more brazen every day; they are throwing workers out into the street, and this at a time when the people are suffering from shortages.
A vast majority of the peasants, at congress after congress, have loudly and clearly declared that landed proprietorship is an injustice and robbery. Meanwhile, a government which calls itself revolutionary and democratic has been leading peasants by the nose for months and deceiving them by promises and delays. For months the capitalists did not allow Minister Chernov to issue a law prohibiting the purchase and sale of land. And when this law was finally passed, the capitalists started a foul slander campaign against Chernov, which they are still continuing. The government has become so brazen in its defence of the landowners that it is beginning to bring peasants to trial for ‘unauthorised’ seizures of land.
They are leading the peasants by the nose, telling them to wait for the Constituent Assembly. The convocation of the Assembly, however, is being steadily postponed by the capitalists. Now that owing to Bolshevik pressure it has been set for 30 September (13 October), the capitalists are openly clamouring about this being ‘impossibly’ short notice, and are demanding the Constituent Assembly’s postponement. The most influential members of the capitalist and landowner party, the ‘Cadet’, or ‘people’s freedom’, Party, such as Panina, are openly urging that the convocation of the Constituent Assembly be delayed until after the war.
As to land, wait until the Constituent Assembly. As to the Constituent Assembly, wait until the end of the war. As to the end of the war, wait until complete victory. That is what it comes to. The capitalists and landowners, having a majority in the government, are plainly mocking at the peasants.
II
But how could this happen in a free country, after the overthrow of the tsarist regime?
In a non-free country, the people are ruled by a tsar and a handful of landowners, capitalists and bureaucrats who are not elected by anybody.
In a free country, the people are ruled only by those who have been elected for that purpose by the people themselves. At the elections the people divide themselves into parties, and as a rule each class of the population forms its own party; for instance, the landowners, the capitalists, the peasants and the workers all form separate parties. In free countries, therefore, the people are ruled through an open struggle between parties and by free agreement between these parties.
For about four months after the overthrow of the tsarist regime on 27 February 1917, Russia was ruled as a free country, i.e. through an open struggle between freely formed parties and by free agreement between them. To understand the development of the Russian revolution, therefore, it is above all necessary to study the chief parties, the class interests they defended, and the relations among them all.
III
After the overthrow of the tsarist regime state power passed into the hands of the first Provisional Government, consisting of representatives of the bourgeoisie, i.e. the capitalists, who were joined by the landowners. The ‘Cadet’ Party, the chief capitalist party, held pride of place as the ruling and government party of the bourgeoisie.
It was no accident this party secured power, although it was not the capitalists, of course, but the workers and peasants, the soldiers and sailors, who fought the tsarist troops and shed their blood for liberty. Power was secured by the capitalist party because the capitalist class possessed the power of wealth, organisation and knowledge. Since 1905, and particularly during the war, the class of the capitalists, and the landowners associated with them, have made in Russia the greatest progress in organising.
The Cadet Party has always been monarchist, both in 1905 and from 1905 to 1917. After the people’s victory over tsarist tyranny it proclaimed itself a republican party. The experience of history shows that whenever the people triumphed over a monarchy, capitalist parties were willing to become republican as long as they could uphold the privileges of the capitalists and their unlimited power over the people.
The Cadet Party pays lip-service to ‘people’s freedom’. But actually it stands for the capitalists, and it was immediately backed by all the landowners, monarchists and Black Hundreds. The press and the elections are proof of this. After the revolution, all the bourgeois papers and the whole Black Hundred press began to sing in unison with the Cadets. Not daring to come out openly, all the monarchist parties supported the Cadet Party at the elections, as, for example, in Petrograd.
Having obtained state power, the Cadets made every effort to continue the predatory war of conquest begun by Tsar Nicholas II, who had concluded secret predatory treaties with the British and French capitalists. Under these treaties, the Russian capitalists were promised, in the event of victory, the seizure of Constantinople, Galicia, Armenia, etc. As to the people, the government of the Cadets put them off with empty subterfuges and promises, deferring the decision of all matters of vital and essential importance to the workers and peasants until the Constituent Assembly met, without appointing the date of its convocation.
Making use of liberty, the people began to organise independently. The chief organisation of the workers and peasants, who form the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia, was the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. These Soviets already began to be formed during the February Revolution, and within a few weeks all class-conscious and advanced workers and peasants were united in Soviets in most of the larger cities of Russia and in many rural districts.
The Soviets were elected in an absolutely free way. They were genuine organisations of the people, of the workers and peasants. They were genuine organisations of the vast majority of the people. The workers and peasants in soldiers’ uniforms were armed.
It goes without saying that the Soviets could and should have taken over state power in full. Pending the convocation of the Constituent Assembly there should have been no other power in the state but the Soviets. Only then would our revolution have become a truly popular and truly democratic revolution. Only then could the working people, who are really striving for peace, and who really have no interest in a war of conquest, have begun firmly and resolutely to carry out a policy which would have ended the war of conquest and led to peace. Only then could the workers and peasants have curbed the capitalists, who are making fabulous profits ‘from the war’ and who have reduced the country to a state of ruin and starvation. But in the Soviets only a minority of the deputies were on the side of the revolutionary workers’ party, the Bolshevik Social-Democrats, who demanded that all state power should be transferred to the Soviets. The majority of the deputies to the Soviets were on the side of the parties of the Menshevik Social-Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were opposed to the transfer of power to the Soviets. Instead of removing the bourgeois government and replacing it by a government of the Soviets, these parties insisted on supporting the bourgeois government, compromising with it and forming a coalition government with it. This policy of compromise with the bourgeoisie pursued by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, who enjoyed the confidence of the majority of the people, is the main content of the entire course of development of the revolution during the five months since it began.
IV
Let us first see how this compromising of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie proceeded, and then let us try to explain why the majority of the people trusted them.
V
The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries have compromised with the capitalists in one way or another at every stage of the Russian Revolution.
At the very close of February 1917, as soon as the people had triumphed and the tsarist regime had been overthrown, the capitalist Provisional Government admitted Kerensky as a ‘socialist’. As a matter of fact, Kerensky has never been a socialist; he was only a Trudovik, and he enlisted himself with the ‘Socialist-Revolutionaries’ only in March 1917, when it was already safe and quite profitable to do so. Through Kerensky, as Deputy Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, the capitalist Provisional Government immediately set about gaining control of and taming the Soviet. The Soviet, i.e. the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who predominated in it, allowed itself to be tamed, agreeing immediately after the formation of the capitalist Provisional Government to ‘support it’ – ‘to the extent’ that it carried out its promises.
The Soviet regarded itself as a body verifying and exercising control over the activities of the Provisional Government. The leaders of the Soviet established what was known as a Contact Commission to keep in touch with the government. Within that Contact Commission, the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders of the Soviet held continuous negotiations with the capitalist government, holding, properly speaking, the status of Ministers without portfolio or unofficial Ministers.
This state of affairs lasted throughout March and almost the whole of April. Seeking to gain time, the capitalists resorted to delays and subterfuges. Not a single step of any importance to further the revolution was taken by the capitalist government during this period. It did absolutely nothing even to further its direct and immediate task, the convocation of the Constituent Assembly; it did not submit the question to the localities or even set up a central commission to handle the preparations. The government was concerned with only one thing, namely, surreptitiously renewing the predatory international treaties concluded by the tsar with the capitalists of Britain and France, thwarting the revolution as cautiously and quietly as possible and promising everything without fulfilling any of its promises. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the Contact Commission acted like simpletons who were fed on fancy phrases, promises and more promises. Like the crow in the fable, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks succumbed to flattery and listened with pleasure to the assurances of the capitalists that they valued the Soviets highly and did not take a single step without them.
But time passed and the capitalist government did absolutely nothing for the revolution. On the contrary, during this period it managed, to the detriment of the revolution, to renew the secret predatory treaties, or, rather, to reaffirm them and ‘vitalise’ them by supplementary and no less secret negotiations with Anglo-French imperialist diplomats. During this period it managed, to the detriment of the revolution, to lay the foundations of a counter-revolutionary organisation of (or at least of a rapprochement among) the generals and officers in the army in the field. To the detriment of the revolution it managed to start the organisation of industrialists, of factory-owners, who, under the onslaught of the workers, were compelled to make concession after concession, but who at the same time began to sabotage (damage) production and prepare to bring it to a standstill when the opportunity came.
However, the organisation of the advanced workers and peasants in the Soviets made steady progress. The foremost representatives of the oppressed classes felt that, in spite of the agreement between the government and the Petrograd Soviet, in spite of Kerensky’s pompous talk, in spite of the ‘Contact Commission’, the government remained an enemy of the people, an enemy of the revolution. The people felt that unless the resistance of the capitalists was broken, the cause of peace, liberty and the revolution, would inevitably be lost. The impatience and bitterness of the people kept on growing.
VI
It burst out on 20-21 April. The movement flared up spontaneously; nobody had cleared the ground for it. The movement was so markedly directed against the government that one regiment even appeared fully armed at the Mariinsky Palace to arrest the ministers. It became perfectly obvious to everybody that the government could not retain power. The Soviets could (and should) have taken over power without meeting the least resistance from any quarter. Instead, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks supported the collapsing capitalist government, entangled themselves even further in compromises with it and took steps that were even more fatal to the revolution, that tended to lead to its doom.
Revolution enlightens all classes with a rapidity and thoroughness unknown in normal, peaceful times. The capitalists, better organised and more experienced than anybody else in matters of class struggle and politics, learnt their lesson quicker than the others. Realising that the government’s position was hopeless, they resorted to a method which for many decades, ever since 1848, has been practised by the capitalists of other countries in order to fool, divide and weaken the workers. This method is known as a ‘coalition’ government, i.e. a joint cabinet formed of members of the bourgeoisie and turncoats from socialism.
In countries where freedom and democracy have long existed side by side with a revolutionary labour movement, in Britain and France, the capitalists have repeatedly and very successfully resorted to this method. When the ‘socialist’ leaders entered a bourgeois cabinet, they invariably proved to be figureheads, puppets, screens for the capitalists, instruments for deceiving the workers. The ‘democratic and republican’ capitalists of Russia resorted to this very method. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks let themselves be fooled at once, and the ‘coalition’ cabinet, joined by Chernov, Tsereteli and co., became a fact on 6 May.
The simpletons of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties were jubilant and fatuously bathed in the rays of the ministerial glory of their leaders. The capitalists gleefully rubbed their hands at having found helpers against the people in the persons of the ‘leaders of the Soviets’ and at having secured their promise to support ‘offensive operations at the front’, i.e. a resumption of the imperialist predatory war, which had come to a standstill for a while. The capitalists were well aware of the puffed-up impotence of these leaders, they knew that the promises of the bourgeoisie – regarding control over production, and even the organisation of production, regarding a peace policy and so forth – would never be fulfilled.
And so it turned out. The second phase in the development of the revolution, 6 May to 9 June, or 18 June, fully corroborated the expectations of the capitalists as to the ease with which the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks could be fooled.
While Peshekhonov and Skobelev were deceiving themselves and the people with florid speeches to the effect that 100 per cent of the profits of the capitalists would be taken away from them, that their ‘resistance was broken’ and so forth, the capitalists continued to consolidate their position. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was undertaken during this period to curb the capitalists. The ministerial turncoats from socialism proved to be mere talking machines for distracting the attention of the oppressed classes, while the entire apparatus of state administration actually remained in the hands of the bureaucracy (the officialdom) and the bourgeoisie. The notorious Palchinsky, Deputy Minister for Industry, was a typical representative of that apparatus, blocking every measure against the capitalists. While the ministers prated everything remained as of old.
The bourgeoisie used Minister Tsereteli in particular to fight the revolution. He was sent to ‘pacify’ Kronstadt when the local revolutionaries had the audacity to remove an appointed commissar. The bourgeoisie launched in their newspapers an incredibly vociferous, violent and vicious campaign of lies, slander and vituperation against Kronstadt, accusing it of the desire “to secede from Russia”, and repeating this and similar absurdities in a thousand ways to intimidate the petty bourgeoisie and the philistines. A most typically stupid and frightened philistine, Tsereteli, was the most ‘conscientious’ of all in swallowing the bait of bourgeois slander; he was the most zealous of all in smashing up and subduing Kronstadt, without realising that he was playing the role of a lackey of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. He turned out to be the instrument of the ‘compromise’ arrived at with revolutionary Kronstadt, whereby the commissar for Kronstadt was not simply appointed by the government, but was elected locally and was confirmed by the government. It was on such miserable compromises that the ministers who had deserted socialism for the bourgeoisie wasted their time.
Wherever a bourgeois minister could not appear in defence of the government, before the revolutionary workers or in the Soviets, Skobelev, Tsereteli, Chernov or some other ‘socialist’ Minister appeared (or, to be precise, was sent by the bourgeoisie) and faithfully performed their assignment; he would do his level best to defend the Cabinet, whitewash the capitalists and fool the people by making promise after promise and by advising people to wait, wait and wait.
Minister Chernov particularly was engaged in bargaining with his bourgeois colleagues; down to July, to the new ‘crisis of power’ which began after the movement of 3-4 July, to the resignation of the Cadets from the Cabinet, Minister Chernov was continuously engaged in the useful and interesting work, so beneficial to the people, of ‘persuading’ his bourgeois colleagues, exhorting them to agree at least to prohibition of the purchase and sale of land. This prohibition had been most solemnly promised to the peasants at the All-Russia Congress of Peasant Deputies in Petrograd. But the promise remained only a promise. Chernov proved unable to fulfil it either in May or in June, until the revolutionary tide, the spontaneous outbreak of 3-4 July, which coincided with the resignation of the Cadets from the Cabinet, made it possible to enact this measure. Even then, however, it proved to be an isolated measure, incapable of promoting to any palpable extent the struggle of the peasants against the landowners for land.
Meanwhile, at the front, the counter-revolutionary, imperialist task of resuming the imperialist, predatory war, a task which Guchkov, so hated by the people, had been unable to accomplish, was being accomplished successfully and brilliantly by the ‘revolutionary democrat’ Kerensky, that new-baked member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He revelled in his own eloquence, incense was burned to him by the imperialists, who were using him as a pawn, he was flattered and worshipped – all because he served the capitalists faithfully, trying to talk the ‘revolutionary troops’ into agreeing to resume the war being waged in pursuance of the treaties concluded by Tsar Nicholas II with the capitalists of Britain and France, a war waged so that Russian capitalists might secure Constantinople and Lvov, Erzurum and Trebizond.
So passed the second phase of the Russian revolution – 6 May to 9 (22) June. Shielded and defended by the ‘socialist’ Ministers, the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie grew in strength, consolidated their position and prepared an offensive both against the external enemy and against the internal enemy, i.e. the revolutionary workers.
VII
On 9 June, the revolutionary workers’ party, the Bolsheviks, was preparing for a demonstration in Petrograd to give organised expression to the irresistibly growing popular discontent and indignation. The Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders, entangled in compromises with the bourgeoisie and bound by the imperialist policy of an offensive, were horrified, feeling that they were losing their influence among the masses. A general howl went up against the demonstration, and the counter-revolutionary Cadets joined in this howl, this time together with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Under their direction, and as a result of their policy of compromise with the capitalists, the swing of the petty-bourgeois masses to an alliance with the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie became quite definite and strikingly obvious. This is the historical significance and class meaning of the crisis of 9 June.
The Bolsheviks called off the demonstration, having no wish to lead the workers at that moment into a losing fight against the united Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The latter, however, so as to retain at least a vestige of the people’s confidence, were compelled to call a general demonstration for 18 June (1 July). The bourgeoisie were beside themselves with rage, rightly discerning in this a swing of the petty-bourgeois democrats towards the proletariat, and they decided to paralyse the action of the democrats by an offensive at the front.
In fact, 18 June was marked by an impressive victory for the slogans of the revolutionary proletariat, the slogans of Bolshevism, among the people of Petrograd. And on 19 June the bourgeoisie and the Bonapartist[9] Kerensky solemnly announced that the offensive at the front had begun on 18 June.
The offensive meant in effect the resumption of the predatory war in the interests of the capitalists and against the will of the vast majority of the working people. That is why the offensive was inevitably accompanied, on the one hand, by a gigantic growth of chauvinism and the transfer of military power (and consequently of state power) to the military gang of Bonapartists, and, on the other, by the use of violence against the masses, the persecution of the internationalists, the abolition of freedom of agitation and the arrest and shooting of those who were against the war.
Whereas 6 May bound the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to the triumphal chariot of the bourgeoisie with a rope, 19 June shackled them, as servants of the capitalists, with a chain.
VIII
Owing to the resumption of the predatory war, the bitterness of the people naturally grew even more rapidly and intensely. 3-4 July witnessed an outburst of their anger which the Bolsheviks attempted to restrain and which, of course, they had to endeavour to make as organised as possible.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, being slaves of the bourgeoisie, shackled by their master, agreed to everything: dispatching reactionary troops to Petrograd, bringing back the death penalty, disarming the workers and revolutionary troops, arresting and hounding and closing down newspapers without trial. The power which the bourgeoisie in the government were unable to take entirely, and which the Soviets did not want to take, fell into the hands of the military clique, the Bonapartists, who, of course, were wholly backed by the Cadets and the Black Hundreds, by the landowners and capitalists.
Down the ladder, step by step. Having once set foot on the ladder of compromise with the bourgeoisie, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks slid irresistibly downwards, to rock bottom. On 28 February (13 March), in the Petrograd Soviet, they promised conditional support to the bourgeois government. On 6 May they saved it from collapse and allowed themselves to be made its servants and defenders by agreeing to an offensive. On 9 June they united with the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie in a campaign of furious rage, lies and slander against the revolutionary proletariat. On 19 June they approved the resumption of the predatory war. On 3 July they consented to the summoning of reactionary troops, which was the beginning of their complete surrender of power to the Bonapartists. Down the ladder, step by step.
This shameful finale of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties was not fortuitous but a consequence of the economic status of the small owners, the petty bourgeoisie, as has been repeatedly borne out by experience in Europe.
IX
Everybody, of course, has seen the small owner bend every effort and strain every nerve to ‘get on in the world’, to become a real master, to rise to the position of a ‘strong’ employer, to the position of a bourgeois. As long as capitalism rules the roost, there is no alternative for the small owner other than becoming a capitalist (and that is possible at best in the case of one small owner out of a hundred), or becoming a ruined man, a semi-proletarian and ultimately a proletarian. The same is true in politics: the petty-bourgeois democrats, especially their leaders, tend to trail after the bourgeoisie. The leaders of the petty-bourgeois democrats console their people with promises and assurances about the possibility of reaching agreement with the big capitalists; at best, and for a very brief period, they obtain certain minor concessions from the capitalists for a small upper section of the working people; but on every decisive issue, on every important matter, the petty-bourgeois democrats have always tailed after the bourgeoisie as a feeble appendage to them, as an obedient tool in the hands of the financial magnates. The experience of Britain and France has proved this over and over again.
The experience of the Russian revolution from February to July 1917, when events developed with unusual rapidity, particularly under the influence of the imperialist war and the deep-going crisis brought about by it, has most strikingly and palpably confirmed the old Marxist truth that the position of the petty bourgeoisie is unstable.
The lesson of the Russian revolution is that there can be no escape for the working people from the iron grip of war, famine and enslavement by the landowners and capitalists unless they completely break with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties and clearly understand the latter’s treacherous role, unless they renounce all compromises with the bourgeoisie and resolutely side with the revolutionary workers. Only the revolutionary workers, if supported by the peasant poor, are capable of smashing the resistance of the capitalists and leading the people in gaining land without compensation, complete liberty, victory over famine and the war and a just and lasting peace.
* * *
Afterword
This article was written at the end of July, as is apparent from the text.
The history of the revolution during August has fully corroborated what is said in this article. Then, at the end of August, the Kornilov revolt[10] caused a new turn in the revolution by clearly demonstrating to the whole people that the Cadets, in alliance with the counter-revolutionary generals, were striving to disband the Soviets and restore the monarchy. The near future will show how strong this new turn of the revolution is, and whether it will succeed in putting an end to the fatal policy of compromise with the bourgeoisie.
Endnotes
[1] The Dreyfus Affair began in 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was convicted in a secret court martial of selling secrets to a foreign power, and sentenced to life on Devil’s Island. This was a frame-up to protect another officer – a non-Jewish aristocrat – involving the General Staff. A scandal erupted that shook French society. Dreyfus was finally released from prison in 1899 and fully vindicated in 1906.
[2] In 1913 the tsar’s government staged a trial of Menahem Beilis, a Jewish man falsely accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy. The murder was actually committed by the Black Hundreds. The government’s aim was to stir up antisemitism and take advantage of anti-Jewish pogroms to divert the people’s attention from the revolutionary movement growing throughout the country. The trial aroused public indignation. In a number of towns, workers held protest demonstrations. Beilis was eventually acquitted.
[3] See Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Wellred Books, 2020, p. 156.
[4] Birzhevyie Vedomosti (Stock-Exchange Recorder) (Birzhekva) – bourgeois daily published in St. Petersburg from 1880.
[5] See Lenin, ‘At the Uttermost Limit’, 20 November 1915, LCW, Vol. 21, pp. 421-2.
[6] The coalition Provisional Government formed on 24 July (6 August) 1917. The cabinet was composed of Cadets, SRs, Mensheviks, Popular Socialists and non-party people who were close to the Cadets. It included Kerensky as Premier and War and Naval Minister (SR), Nekrasov as Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance (Cadet) and Avksentiev as Minister of the Interior (SR). Due to this composition, the cabinet was in the hands of the Cadets.
[7] The declaration issued by the Provisional Government on 8 (21) July 1917, which contained a number of demagogic promises which the Provisional Government hoped would reassure the people after the July events. The government promised to hold elections to the Constituent Assembly on the appointed date of 17 (30) September, guarantee the early introduction of local – urban and zemstvo (rural) – self-government, abolish the social estates, take steps to remedy economic dislocation and draft legislation on an eight-hour day, labour safety and social insurance, as well as a land reform, to be considered by the Constituent Assembly. Not one of these promises was kept.
[8] On 12 (25) July the Provisional Government introduced capital punishment at the front. The divisional ‘military revolutionary tribunals’ that were set up passed sentences which became effective immediately and were carried out without delay.
[9] Bonapartism (from Bonaparte, the name of the two French emperors) is a name applied to a government which endeavours to appear non-partisan by taking advantage of a highly acute struggle between the parties of the capitalists and the workers. Actually serving the capitalists, such a government dupes the workers most of all by promises and petty concessions. – Lenin
[10] The Kornilov revolt against the revolution was organised by the bourgeoisie and landowners in August 1917. See ‘To the CC of the RSDLP’.