3. Working Women of Petrograd Ignite the Russian Revolution

February - October 1917

3.1 Introduction

A revolution is a popular event when the masses are propelled into action. Ideally, the programmatic demands formulated by the Marxists should, at each decisive point in the revolution, match the awareness and aspirations of the masses to the objective conditions, guiding them to the understanding that a socialist revolution is the only long-term solution to their problems.

But that is not always the case and, initially, in Russia in 1917 those Bolsheviks already in the country, in their majority, lagged behind the mass movement. A major factor in this was that the Bolshevik Party for the previous twelve years had as its goal the Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry when the bourgeoisie would take power from the Tsar by revolutionary means and establish a bourgeois-democratic state. However, the reality in semi-feudal Russia was that for the masses to realise their democratic demands – in particular ‘land to the peasant’, an end to the war, equality before the law for women, and an end to national oppression – the revolution had to transcend the limits of the capitalist system.

3.2 Socialist Revolution – Women the Touchstone

The double oppression of working women in society was, of course, reflected in the membership of the Bolshevik Party. The formal equality of comrades that existed in the party could not erase the inequalities that existed in society, the roots of which Lenin would speak out against for the rest of his life. At this time a party survey revealed that on the eve of the February 1917 Revolution, the Bolshevik Party had about 24,000 members nationally, the Bolshevik Old Guard. The Inter District Group, or Mezhraiontsii, and a section of the Menshevik Internationalists had between them approximately 4,000 members. These fused at the Sixth Party Congress (July-August 1917), and of the total of 28,000, about 2,500 were women. Indeed, at the Sixth Party Congress, out of 171 delegates, only ten were women.^[1] The survey found that of the women members, one-third declared they came from worker or peasant families, one-third said they were from the lower rungs of the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia, and the petty bourgeoisie, a few admitted to being from the aristocracy, the remainder refused to give their class origin. On the other hand, nearly two-thirds of the men in the Bolshevik Party came from worker or peasant families.

From 1905, for over a decade, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had called for the revolutionary seizure of power by an alliance of the proletariat and petty bourgeois (peasant) forces. The resulting regime would be crowned by a bourgeois, democratically-elected Constituent Assembly, and this would legitimise the peasants’ revolutionary land seizures. Russia was considered too socially and economically backward to have its socialist revolution before western Europe. The best that could be hoped for was a successful democratic revolution in Russia that would be the spark to a socialist revolution in industrialised western Europe, particularly Germany, that would accelerate Russian development. Shorthand for this stage-ist approach was the Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry (RDDPP).^[2]

In Petrograd, on 7 March 1917, Pravda presented official policy: “Of course, there is no question among us of the downfall of the rule of capital, but only the downfall of the rule of the autocracy and feudalism”.^[3] Stalin, on his return from Siberia, replaced Alexander Shlyapnikov as the senior party organiser in Petrograd, a position he would hold until the October Revolution.^[4] In Pravda No. 8 on 14 March, Stalin wrote a brief article that was significant for not mentioning the war and ending with a clarion call for a “democratic republic for all the citizens of Russia”.^[5] The following day Pravda announced that Lev Kamenev and Stalin had joined the editorial board and carried an article by Kamenev describing Lenin’s opposition to the war as “not a policy of peace, but a policy of slavery, which would be rejected with disgust by a free people”.^[6] But, in 1917 Russia, supporting bourgeois democracy and opposing socialism as premature meant, politically, to shift from a proletarian to a conciliationist position, and inevitably to class collaboration. We pay special attention to the role of Stalin during the period before Lenin returned to Russia, as it was then that his natural instincts had the opportunity to flower. We see, in embryo, the reactionary policies he would impose when leader of the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International.

As events unfolded, Lenin demonstrated his political genius. He re-assessed his analysis in the light of the actual situation in Russia and proposed an entirely new course of action: that Russia could only solve its bourgeois-democratic tasks and end the war through a socialist revolution. This achievement should not be underestimated; all too often the objective conditions have existed for a socialist revolution only to be betrayed by leaders who saw reality through the spectacles of pre-conceived schemas.^[7] With the perspective of a socialist rather than a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the role of women as a revolutionary force both objectively and subjectively changed. A review of the articles Lenin wrote addressing aspects of the ‘Woman Question’ shows his views underwent both a quantitative and qualitative change in 1917. From his Letters from Afar, Lenin’s articles referring to women increased six-fold in frequency and, more importantly, the quality of the articles changed, from comment to mobilising women into action:

If we do not draw women into public activity, into the militia, into political life; if we do not tear women away from the deadening atmosphere of household and kitchen; then it is impossible to secure real freedom, it is impossible even to build democracy, let alone socialism. … Who can carry out these measures except a people’s militia, to which women must belong equally with men?^[8]

One of Lenin’s first acts upon returning to Petrograd was to demand support for political work among women:

Unless women are brought to take an independent part not only in political life generally, but also in daily and universal public service, it is no use talking about full and stable democracy, let alone socialism. And such ‘police’ functions as care of the sick and of homeless children, food inspection, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until women are on an equal footing with men, not merely nominally but in reality.^[9]

One way of tracing Lenin’s political transition from calling for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, to taking the first steps towards “standing with one foot in socialism”, is to review his writings on the role of women. Certainly, from April 1917 Lenin had the perspective that only a revolution led by the proletariat could solve Russia’s immediate problems: land to the peasant, peace, and an end to hunger. The large numbers of women working in industry in 1917 and their leading role in the February Revolution confirmed Lenin’s view that their active participation on a mass scale was essential for the success of the coming socialist revolution and attaining a workers’ state.

Opposition to Lenin’s policy towards the Provisional Government was openly voiced in the pages of Pravda. In his Letters from Afar Lenin demanded no confidence in the Provisional Government, destruction of the autocratic state and its replacement by Soviets resting on an armed militia of the proletariat and peasants. The first letter appeared in Pravda Nos. 14 and 15 (21 and 22 March), considerably abridged by the editorial board with the passages criticising those who supported the Provisional Government cut out.^[10] In his second letter, Lenin introduced the demand for “the formation of a workers’ militia, or workers’ home guard, extending to the whole people, to all men and women”. This, and all subsequent letters were, in effect, suppressed. Those Bolshevik Party members who continued to accept the RDDPP as the way forward were slipping into a counter-revolutionary role as the question of power was posed.

Stalin, as member of the editorial board of Pravda, did not differentiate himself from Kamenev’s defencist articles. On 25 March, he published an article in Pravda entitled ‘On the Abolition of National Disabilities’.^[11] His basic idea was that national oppression was a relic of feudalism and its social base was the landed aristocracy; he claimed that where “the bourgeoisie enjoys undivided power the nationalities develop more or less freely”. The logical outcome of this line of thought is that the overthrow of the feudal system means the abolition of national oppression. The article is a clear pointer to why in the 1920s he would have the Chinese Communist Party prop up Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang. Chiang had other ideas and when he had sufficient strength turned on his benefactors and massacred hundreds of thousands of communists and worker militants.^[12]

Stalin presented the chief political report to the All-Russian Conference of Bolsheviks which opened in Petrograd on 28 March. He is reported to have claimed: “The Provisional Government has taken the role of consolidator of the revolutionary people … Insofar as the Provisional Government consolidates the advances of the revolution – to that extent we should support it”.^[13] Left to his own devices, in a pre-revolutionary situation, Stalin was a support for the bourgeois institution that was, in reality, blocking the key and essential bourgeois-democratic demand for Russia – land to the peasants. This critical support for a counter-revolutionary government would be repeated with devastating effect in China 1924-27.^[14]

But Lenin was declaring political war on the very people Stalin was proposing to support. Lenin arrived in Petrograd on 3 April, and on the afternoon of 4 April presented his ten April Theses. Krupskaya described the reaction he received: “The comrades were somewhat taken aback for the moment. Many of them thought that Ilyich was presenting the case in much too blunt a manner, and that it was too early yet to speak of a socialist revolution”.^[15] Kollontai was the only person present to speak in Lenin’s support. Soon, with Shlyapnikov’s assistance, she was elected the delegate of an army unit that debated for an entire day before agreeing it could be adequately represented by a woman.^[16] It was during April that Kollontai established herself as a leading spokesperson of the Bolshevik Party and, with Anatoly Lunacharsky, Trotsky, and Zinoviev was one of the most popular speakers in Petrograd, drawing huge crowds.

Lenin’s theses were published in Pravda on 7 April. They appeared over Lenin’s name alone. The next day the editorial in Pravda stated: “As for Comrade Lenin’s general scheme, it appears to us unacceptable, inasmuch as it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois-democratic revolution is completed, and builds on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution”.^[17] This editorial demonstrated a total failure of the editorial board to understand that the socialist revolution was possible in Russia precisely because the Provisional Government was failing to carry through the bourgeois revolution.

Lenin argued that it was time to call for power to be “in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants”, with the revolutionary government being the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.^[18] On the evening of 8 April, the Petrograd Committee rejected Lenin’s theses by thirteen votes to two with one abstention.^[19] As senior party organiser, Stalin would have carried great weight and, given that the Stalinist propaganda machine never trumpeted Stalin’s support for Lenin at this important meeting, we can be very confident that he failed to back him.

Because the Soviets effectively held power, and were truly democratic, the Bolsheviks could win a majority by ideological struggle alone. Thus, while the Bolsheviks were in a minority, they would restrict their activities to criticism, exposing the errors of the Mensheviks and SRs, all the time attempting to raise the consciousness of the masses to a level which understood the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets. Lenin was declaring that the world’s first socialist revolution could take place in a relatively backward, peasant-dominated country because “land to the peasant” – the central bourgeois-democratic task for Russia, affecting some 80 per cent of the population – could be achieved only if state power was held by the proletariat.^[20] This meant that the Bolsheviks would have the support of the bulk of the peasantry (at least initially) for a socialist revolution and the establishment of a commune-type state in Russia.

This new prospect of a socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat did not fit into the mindset of the Old Bolsheviks. Before the February Revolution only Trotsky had proposed that the Russian proletariat might win state power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that the revolution would not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but take socialist measures.^[21] In this sense the April theses were ‘Trotskyist’, and this was a criticism that several Old Bolsheviks levelled at Lenin, who replied:

This is a bourgeois revolution, it is therefore useless to speak of socialism,’ say our opponents. But we say just the opposite: ‘Since the bourgeoisie cannot find a way out of the present situation, the revolution is bound to go on.’ We must not confine ourselves to democratic phrases; we must make the situation clear to the masses, and indicate a number of practical measures to them, … When all such measures are carried out, Russia will be standing with one foot in socialism.^[22]

Between February and the April Conference in Petrograd (14-22 April) the Bolshevik Party in the city had grown from 2,000 to 15,000. Occurring when it did and where it did, the Conference would be key in determining the fundamental question of whether the Bolshevik Party was heading toward a Constituent Assembly or toward the conquest of power via a socialist revolution. The huge influx of predominantly young workers who had been radicalised by revolutionary events and stood well to the left of local leaders, had the effect of crushing the opposition of the Old Bolsheviks.^[23] Noticeable by his absence was Stalin, senior party organiser in Petrograd. His short period in the leadership had singularly failed to develop policies which could have acted as a springboard for Lenin on his return. The Old Bolsheviks were defeated by twenty – six with nine abstentions.^[24]

Lenin answered the arguments that the Russian workers could not take power because the objective conditions in Russia did not permit it, by arguing that the Russian Revolution was not an independent act, but part of the world revolution. Before 1917, only Trotsky had dared to suggest that in a revolutionary situation it would be the dictatorship of the urban workers that would carry through the revolutionary democratic measures, but that socialist change could not be completed without an international socialist revolution. Lenin now accepted the core concepts of Trotsky’s theory. His speech to the 1 November 1917 session of the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks makes this clear, but the minutes of the meeting, and many others, were later deleted under Stalin’s orders.^[25] Lenin’s apparent silence on this matter gave the Stalinists a major cudgel with which to beat Trotsky in the faction fights within the Russian Communist Party.

A few days after the Petrograd Conference came the Seventh All-Russia Conference of 24-29 April, 150 delegates representing some 79,000 members nationally. Lenin’s resolution condemning the Provisional Government as the tool of the bourgeoisie and landowners and calling for all state power to be transferred to the Soviets was passed by an overwhelming majority.^[26] The internal party struggle appeared to be over, but after Lenin’s death it would be found that the majority of the Old Bolsheviks had failed to learn the lessons of October, and when called to analyse current events would fall back on the political schemas they had held early in 1917. At the Sixth Congress between 26 July-3 August 1917, the CC was re-elected and, at the time of the October Revolution, would comprise twenty-one full members and ten candidate members.^[27] Of these thirty-one, three were women; Kollontai as a full member, Varvara Yakovleva and Elena Stasova were candidate members, the latter Secretary to the Central Committee.

The Russian February Revolution would grow into the Russian October (socialist) Revolution, the most important political event of the twentieth century, and would test Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership to breaking point.

3.3 Rabotnitsa

After the February Revolution, women comprised as many as two-thirds of the workforce in the munitions and textile industries and were a strong presence in the previously male strongholds of the metallurgical and chemical industries. On 10 March, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Party Committee placed Vera Slutskaia, fresh from her successful mobilisation of the women of the tram depot on Vasilevsky Island, in charge of agitation among working women. It took her just three days to submit a report insisting on the revival of Rabotnitsa. She simultaneously proposed a Bureau of Working Women that would immediately begin to agitate and propagandise in preparation for the launch of the paper. Each district committee in Petrograd was to select a woman representative to assist in the re-launch of Rabotnitsa, help produce and distribute leaflets “directed specifically to the woman proletarian question”; in particular, paid maternity leave and provision of childcare facilities at workplaces.^[28]

The women of Petrograd had been the major spark igniting the revolutionary process. But, on 11 March, Alexander Kerensky (then Minister of Justice), on behalf of the first Provisional Government, announced that women’s suffrage while accepted in principle would have to wait for the outcome of the election of a Constituent Assembly. In response, angry bourgeois feminists organised a demonstration of about 35,000, which marched down Nevskii Prospekt, Petrograd’s main street, to the Tauride Palace, the seat of both the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The demonstrators obtained the support of the Soviet before meeting with Prince Lvov, the head of the Provisional Government, who hastily accepted their demand; women would vote for the first time in elections in June 1917. Demonstrating the gulf that existed between bourgeois feminists and the working class, the march loudly demanded not only “Votes for Women”, but also “War until Victory”. Kollontai attempted to push her way onto the platform to address the march but was driven off, first by a hail of blows from umbrellas and then by “a patriotic ruffian” who dragged her away.^[29]

For many on the Executive Committee, the decision to re-launch Rabotnitsa was a response to the Mensheviks and the SRs who had thrown open their doors to working women and were recruiting more rapidly than the Bolsheviks.^[30] But there was still considerable resistance to any concept of a special working group for women. Leading Bolshevik women such as Nadezhda Krupskaya, Konkordiya Samoilova, Lyudmila Stal, and Vera Slutskaia could all warmly welcome Rabotnitsa and serve on its editorial board and agree that women were a militant force to be reckoned with, but still be extremely wary of any scheme which could be seen as dividing the proletariat according to sex. The proposal to launch the Bureau of Working Women was agreed at a meeting on 15 March subject to the condition that no independent women’s organisation would be created.^[31] However, in a revolutionary situation rank and file Bolshevik women “supplemented the work of Rabotnitsa” by organising their own, local campaigns, with the paper acting as the hub of their agitational network.^[32] The editorial board of Rabotnitsa soon took over the functions of the Bureau of Working Women, which faded away.

Rabotnitsa was re-launched with Inessa Armand (now an Executive Committee member of the Moscow Soviet), Alexandra Kollontai (the only female member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet), and Nadezhda Krupskaya as joint editors with Liudmila Menzhinskaia and Elena Rozmirovich, on the editorial board. Lyudmila Stal appears to have carried out the functions of business manager. A number of working women were co-opted onto the editorial board, such as Klavdiia Nicolaeva (daughter of a laundress, set to work aged eight, taught herself to read and write, joined the Bolsheviks in 1908). The first edition (a special double issue) appeared on 10 May, with the formal title Rabotnitsa: Weekly Paper, Organ of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) (Petrograd). Rabotnitsa appeared thirteen times between May 1917 and January 1918, when it was closed due to a lack of newsprint. Sales varied between 40,000 and 50,000 per issue.^[33] This paper provided Lenin with unqualified support and became the backbone of the Bolshevik’s efforts to organise proletarian women during and including the October 1917 Revolution. The agreed driving force was: if women’s liberation is unthinkable without socialism, then socialism is unthinkable without women’s liberation.^[34]

The aim was for Rabotnitsa to integrate working women into activities planned by the party, and simultaneously integrate women’s issues into the strategy and tactics of the party. In addition to the income from sales, Rabotnitsa organised well-attended factory gate meetings often of 1,000 and more, at which Samoilova, Nikolaeva, Stal and Kollontai would speak on topics such as ‘High Prices and the War’. During a meeting at the Vasileostrovskii tram depot, a young Bolshevik sympathiser, tram conductor Alexandra Rodionova, persuaded the workers present to donate three days’ pay to support the paper. Eight hundred roubles were collected and delivered to the Rabotnitsa office. Rodionova soon joined the Bolshevik Party and had responsibility for ensuring the Petrograd tram system functioned throughout the night of the 25-26 October.^[35]

Immediately after the February Revolution, before Kamenev and Stalin joined the editorial team, the pages of Pravda accepted the need to extend Bolshevik influence amongst the women workers of Petrograd, and supported increased political activity. Almost every edition featured reports of women’s meetings, articles, as well as information about planned activities of Bolshevik women, and promoted Rabotnitsa. At a meeting of the Petrograd Executive Committee on 24 March, now with Stalin as senior party organiser, the activities around Rabotnitsa were ‘clarified’. Pravda and Rabotnitsa would call on women to join trade unions and within those organisations raise their demands for full equal rights, maternity protection and an eight-hour working day. These specific demands were to be in addition to the central slogans of land redistribution and a democratic (sic!) republic. Only in factories where all workers were women was it permitted to form women-only committees. Bolshevik women were not to initiate ‘women’s clubs’ either to campaign for specific women’s demands or for self-education. If they sprang up spontaneously they should not hinder them, but they should warn that such women’s clubs were not in the interest of the unity of the working class as a whole.^[36] Reality, in the form of a revolution, would shatter this schema, and Rabotnitsa would play a vital role in organising numerous forms of women’s activities. It would, additionally, challenge stereotypes of women by carrying reports that demonstrated that male and female workers did not always have identical demands because exploitation could take different forms.

3.4 Women Break the ‘Civil Peace’

By the time of the February Revolution, the wives of soldiers stationed in Petrograd were in a state of ferment against the delays in payment of their pitiful allowances, and the appalling conditions under which they lived. The masses had freed themselves from the direct oppression of the Tsar, but all the social injustices continued. The economic dislocation generated by the war had led to food and goods shortages, and profiteering which, of course, affected poor women with a family to support the most. Soldiers’ wives expressed their discontent through protest meetings and spontaneous demonstrations, sometimes thousands strong. The Petrograd Party Committee hesitated to become directly involved in these ‘women only’ events, but having approved the resumption of publication of Rabotnitsa, it agreed that agitators selling Rabotnitsa should intervene and organise meetings and demonstrations in opposition to the war and against rising prices. It is said that these drew in crowds of up to 10,000 women.^[37]

The Mensheviks saw the Provisional Government as a revolutionary bourgeois regime, and that it was the realisation of their hopes for Russia; in turn, they accepted for both themselves and the Soviets the role of a loyal opposition. The Provisional Government was thus able to broker a truce with the Menshevik-SR alliance dominating the Soviets. This alliance constrained the Soviet leadership, preventing it from taking any decisive actions against the government regarding food shortages, inflation or ending the war. As long as the truce continued, the problems facing the masses were insoluble because the root of the problems was the ongoing war, but the Provisional Government would not end the war and the Mensheviks and SRs would go no further than the truce permitted, even using their influence to suppress any actions, industrial or political, that threatened the ‘civil peace’. In opposition to this class collaborationist policy, Bolshevik women were actively supporting and organising the soldiers’ wives to protest about the lack of any improvement in their conditions, and on 11 April, a demonstration of 15,000 soldatki (wives, mothers, and children) went to the Tauride Palace to confront the Soviet and demand that the monthly allowance be increased from a miserly seven to twenty roubles.^[38]

The Menshevik Chairperson of the Soviet, Fedor Dan, on behalf of the Soviet, scolded them for demanding money needed for the war effort. Dan blocked Kollontai, an elected member of the Soviet, from speaking to the women in any official capacity. A furious Kollontai, speaking unofficially, urged the soldatki to elect their own delegates to the Soviet on an anti-war platform. From this time on Bolshevik women were prominent amongst the leaders of the soldatki.^[39]

In April, the Provisional Government’s secret promise to the Allies to continue the war to a ‘glorious conclusion’ was leaked. Mass protests followed, forcing the resignations of the two most-hated bourgeois ministers. On Monday 1 May, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet voted by forty-three to nineteen to save the Provisional Government from collapse by sending six leading Mensheviks and SRs from the Soviet to join the cabinet and form a coalition government, accepting direct responsibility for its actions, in particular continuing the war. With such an unpopular goal, the questions were: How long could this new coalition last? How long could the Mensheviks and SRs continue to lead the Soviets?

Also, on 1 May, laundresses in Petrograd, considered to be amongst the most backward of workers, began a series of strikes demanding the nationalisation of the laundries under the control of the local municipalities. Bolshevik women had launched a Union of Laundresses in February and, by the time of the strike, union membership was some 3,000. Within two days, close to 8,000 women laundry workers in nearly 200 firms scattered across the city had joined the strike. The laundresses demanded a package of reforms: recognition of the union, reduction of their back-breaking fourteen-hour work day to eight hours, a minimum daily wage of four roubles for unskilled workers, six roubles for skilled workers, civility from employers, the introduction of a pay book for accurate calculation of pay, improved sanitary conditions, two weeks annual paid holiday and one month’s sick leave, and jobs to be held open for six months after giving birth.^[40]

Pravda described how the employers immediately retaliated by bringing in scab labour, setting up a ‘yellow’ trade union, and throwing striking women out of company-controlled accommodation. Management reportedly threw boiling water at strikers and chased activists away with hot pokers and revolvers, describing them as “damned vipers” and “unbelieving filth”. The activists replied in kind: they closed scab premises by dousing the stoves with cold water. The nature of the protagonists meant that much of this class war was in public, with street battles between strikers and scabs. Rabotnitsa and Pravda carried articles on the strike in almost every issue, projected it as a model of militancy, and rallied the Petrograd working class behind the laundresses, using the Soviet to pressure the employers.^[41]

The strike was led by Bolshevik women, such as Sofia Goncharskaia, a miner’s daughter from the Ukraine, who headed the union. After a month, on 31 May, Rabotnitsa announced victory, to the extent that the employers paid for the time on strike. It was a valuable propaganda and agitational success for the Bolsheviks, particularly the Bolshevik women who had contributed so much to the success of the strike. This breach of the ‘civil peace’ was politically important because it showed that the SRs and Mensheviks leading the Soviets could not be trusted to support workers in action.

The Petrograd laundry workers’ strike also showed the doubters that even unskilled and politically-inactive groups of workers scattered across an entire city could be mobilised in support of a common goal. It reflected the depth of workers’ grievances and their conviction that a revolutionary party could right past wrongs. The strike undoubtedly raised class consciousness and increased workers’ confidence in their strength, and it was followed by many others in service occupations, of women previously unorganised and unheard.

During May, Stal, Nikolaeva, and other Rabotnitsa activists spoke at a series of meetings aimed at women, calling for an end to the war. On 11 June attendance reached 10,000, and at that meeting guest speakers included representatives from the Swedish and Norwegian Social Democratic Parties’ women’s sections and, for the first time at a Rabotnitsa meeting, two male Bolsheviks, Anatoly Lunacharsky (soon to be Minister of Education) and Petyr Dashkevich (member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee).^[42]

On the other hand, in May 1917, bourgeois feminists in support of the war petitioned the Provisional Government to establish women’s military units believing that women between the ages of eighteen and forty-five should be called-up and used to replace men in the workplace, freeing the latter to go to the front. In war-weary Russia, such proposals could only increase the gulf between bourgeois feminists and the great mass of women, working-class, petty bourgeois and peasant, who wanted an immediate end to the war. The proposal received governmental support, and a Woman’s Battalion was formed and supplied protection for the Winter Palace in Petrograd. It is claimed that some 6,000 women joined the Tsar’s army, but it should be noted that there were far more women in the Red Guards who attacked the Palace than in the Battalion defending it.

A team of women Bolsheviks led by Elena Rozmirovich (editorial board member of Rabotnitsa who had joined the Bolsheviks in 1904) worked to organise the embittered and semi-starved soldatki into the Union of Soldiers’ Wives. At the end of May, a meeting of representatives of the soldatki from the militant Vyborg district, passed a resolution again demanding a monthly allowance of twenty roubles, that officers’ and soldiers’ wives should receive the same allowance, an immediate end to the war, and “All Power to the Soviets”. In June, Bolshevik activists could claim a victory when the Provisional Government finally gave in to pressure and agreed to extend the criteria for eligibility for a military pension to include common law wives and their children.^[43] In fact, very little additional monetary assistance actually arrived because the government was in a deep financial crisis. However, the soldatki were well placed to propagate opposition to the war, and Bolshevik women organised a letter-writing campaign so the wives could explain to their husbands their pitiful situation, their demands, their opposition to the war, and their growing sympathy for the Bolsheviks.

Inspired by the laundresses’ strikes, factory workers, women in particular, were demanding wage rises, improved working conditions (particularly sanitary), maternity benefits, and the abolition of child labour. They were also incensed at the sexual harassment they faced in the workplace and demanded an end to body searches. It was impossible for the party not to appreciate the important roles played by the soldatki and laundresses, and a noticeable shift occurred in the attitude of Bolsheviks to women who were not factory workers. Taking account of the specific demands being raised by women workers, the Bolsheviks re-vamped the party programme, expanding three paragraphs:

1. Prohibition of female labour in all branches of industry injurious to women’s health; prohibition of night work for women; women to be released from work eight weeks before and eight weeks after child-birth, without loss of pay and with free medical and medicinal aid.
2. Establishment of nurseries for infants and young children and rooms for nursing mothers at all factories and other enterprises where women are employed; nursing mothers to be allowed recesses of at least half-hour duration at intervals of not more than three hours; such mothers to receive nursing benefit and their working day to be reduced to six hours. […]
3. The establishment of a labour inspectorate elected by the workers’ organisations [with] women inspectors to be appointed in enterprises where female labour is employed.^[44]

3.5 “All Power to the Soviets”

From April to early July 1917, the Soviets continued to hold the real power and the Provisional Government functioned only so far as the Soviets allowed, but the leadership of the Soviets remained in the hands of the SRs and Mensheviks, with the dominant peasant party, the SRs, the main block to agrarian revolution. Thus, in April, the strategic task facing the Bolshevik Party was not the immediate seizure of power but overcoming the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat and peasantry; bringing the masses to a revolutionary perspective as reflected by winning the leadership of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.^[45] Lenin understood that these lessons must come from experience, but that in a revolutionary situation the working class learns very quickly. From this flowed the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’.^[46]

By the end of June, six editions of Rabotnitsa had been produced, and the editorial board members were established political leaders in Petrograd. Their popularity was due largely to the paper’s campaign against high prices, food shortages, and for an end to the war. What was also happening, and to a large degree spontaneously, was that the most active of Rabotnitsa’s readers were coalescing around the woman representatives selected by the district committees, into pro-active support groups, building support for the protection of female workers, for equal pay, and the need to attract more women into the trade-union movement. A resolution to this effect was presented to, and unanimously accepted at, the first legal All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions held in late June.

Rabotnitsa was becoming increasingly important to the work of the Bolsheviks, its editorial board now contained all the leading women Bolsheviks in Petrograd. Every factory was encouraged to send representatives to the editorial board, and there were weekly meetings to receive reports from the different areas and discuss matters of concern. Rossi argues that, at the same time, the paper was raising the party hierarchy towards a better understanding of the role of women workers.^[47]

In June, the Provisional Government rallied and, with support from the Mensheviks and SRs in the Soviets, Kerensky (now Minister for War) announced its intention to launch a new military offensive. Kollontai responded, saying:

At a time when bourgeois chauvinism and Kerenskyism were in full flood and the dangers of conciliation had not yet been finally eliminated, the editorial board of Rabotnitsa, responding in early June 1917, to Kerensky’s call for the Russian army to advance, organised a large international meeting calling for opposition to the criminal slaughter of the war and for world-wide worker solidarity against the common enemy – the capitalists – and their loyal servants, the conciliators. This was the first open international meeting in Russia.^[48]

The military offensive took place on 1 July, and in response to the mass demonstrations in protest, the Provisional Government launched a hysterical propaganda offensive against the Bolsheviks. Prominent Bolsheviks, such as Lenin, were labelled German spies and the activities of the Bolshevik Party were declared responsible for the defeats of the Russian army and the terrible losses suffered. The Bolshevik Party was outlawed, Pravda was closed and its presses wrecked. The Government’s allies in the Soviet denounced the Bolsheviks for crimes against the people. Lenin went into hiding, while Trotsky, Kollontai and others were imprisoned.

Rabotnitsa remained the only functioning Bolshevik publication. Troops arrived to confiscate the issue, but the women working at the printers rescued it and somehow managed to sneak the stacks of the journal past the soldiers and later distributed them in the factories. The anti-Bolshevik propaganda storm had an effect on the soldatki in particular and many withdrew from the party. For a short period, open political work became extremely difficult, with many cases of Bolsheviks being abused and physically attacked.

But the total defeat of the military offensive with tremendous losses meant the end of the Russian army as a fighting force. Thousands of deserters returned home and soon changed the popular mood. Rabotnitsa was again able to begin holding public meetings, although the first on 30 July was attended by only about 700. Two days later 1,000 demonstrated against the attacks on the Bolsheviks, and by 25 August Rabotnitsa could convene a meeting of 5,000 to demand the release of Bolsheviks still under arrest.^[49]

Lenin drew the conclusion that the SR and Menshevik-controlled Soviets had gone over to the side of counter-revolution – this meant that a peaceful transition of power was no longer possible. From mid-July up to October, beginning with ‘On Slogans’, he published a series of articles which explicitly stated that the proletariat should take both political (governmental) power and state power:

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.^[50]

Following the July Days, General Kornilov attempted a reactionary coup which was soon defeated. Dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government, now headed by Kerensky, sky-rocketed. The Mensheviks and the SRs, fully integrated into this government, were rapidly losing popular support which was flowing towards the Bolsheviks. Demand for peace at any price was increasing, particularly among the soldatki and women workers. On 29 August 1917, Lenin publicly declared there could be no solution to the land question in Russia under the Provisional Government-Soviet alliance:

The SRs are deceiving themselves and the peasants precisely by assuming and spreading the idea that [land] reforms, or similar reforms, are possible without overthrowing capitalist rule, without all state power being transferred to the proletariat, without the peasant poor supporting the most resolute, revolutionary measures of a proletarian state power against the capitalists.^[51]

The emphasis of Lenin’s writings shifted from the more general argument that the Soviets take the power, to quite specifically arguing that the Bolshevik Party could and should take power. The two titles which most clearly indicated his thinking are ‘The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power’, and ‘Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?’.

Lenin was confident of victory because not a single important task of the revolution had been accomplished by the reformist leaders of the Soviets. The SRs, the traditional peasant party, had allied itself with the capitalists and was actively betraying the peasants’ interests; only a Bolshevik-led government would nationalise the land. What Lenin understood was that without the proletariat holding governmental and state power – that is the bands of armed men who gave the state its authority being loyal to Bolshevik-led Soviets – “land to the peasant” could not be carried to completion: “The crux of the matter lies in political power passing into the hands of the proletariat”.^[52]

Of course, the Bolshevik, proletarian dictatorship would initially carry through the very same programme that Lenin had originally proposed for the RDDPP. The qualitative difference was that Lenin now argued that this bourgeois-democratic programme could be carried through only if the proletariat held state power. The governmental form that emerged from the Soviets might, for a short period, be two-class, containing elected members of parties representing both the proletariat and the peasantry, but during that time the decisive decisions would be determined by the proletarian elements, and state power would most definitely be in the hands of the factory-based Red Guards.

3.6 Constituent Assembly or Soviet State?

The demand for a democratic (bourgeois) republic governed by a Constituent Assembly had been the declared goal of the Russian Revolution for both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, and considered by Lenin as one of the ‘three pillars of Bolshevism’ until at least 1915. See, for example, ‘On Two Lines in the Revolution’ published in 1915 by Lenin. Trotsky was to later claim that Lenin had decided that if the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Assembly, they would have formally dissolved it and handed all power to the Soviets. Indeed, the democratically-elected Petrograd Town Council, which had a substantial Bolshevik majority, did just that.^[53]

In 1917 the Bolshevik call for “All Power to the Soviets”, and the preparations by the Bolshevik Central Committee for an armed uprising to take state power in the name of the Soviets, took place at the same time as their call for convocation of the Constituent Assembly. The two demands appear contradictory – how could the call for an elected Constituent Assembly be reconciled with organising a revolutionary state based on Soviets from top to bottom, in which all power would be with the proletariat (and poor peasants)?

The RDDPP crowned by a democratically-elected Constituent Assembly was a schema projected by Lenin onto future events. One of Lenin’s great strengths was that he rooted his analyses in reality and when that reality changed, he re-analysed events and re-formulated Bolshevik Party policy. In the reality of 1917 the Soviets were a higher form of democracy, replacing the Constituent Assembly.

On 31 August, the Bolsheviks won the majority in the Petrograd Soviet, on 5 September, in Moscow, a few days later in Kiev, Baku, Kazan and a host of other industrial towns. Two weeks later, in mid-September, Trotsky – shortly after his release from prison – was elected President of the Petrograd Soviet. In the run-up to these successes, Zinoviev wrote an article ‘What Not To Do’, directed against an insurrection, which Stalin published in Pravda on 30 August, unsigned and with no word of reservation or qualification.^[54] Stalin gave the conciliators a platform while taking care not to expose himself directly to any criticism from Lenin.

In September, Lenin demanded that the Bolshevik Party proceed immediately with organising the insurrection.^[55] He went on to insist that the revolution be planned, organised and led independently of the Soviets, that to wait for the endorsement of the Congress of Soviets would be both a “disgrace and a betrayal”.^[56] Trotsky’s proposal to organise and carry out the insurrection as defence of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets (which, remember, was in its majority Bolshevik) had the huge advantage of legitimising the insurrection in the eyes of the masses, including the non-Bolshevik delegates to the Congress and those armed units still loyal to the Mensheviks and SRs. Later he summed up his strategy: “… under the slogan of a struggle for the Second Soviet Congress we won over to our side the bayonets of the revolutionary army”.^[57]

On the streets, Rabotnitsa was going from strength to strength, giving the women comrades the confidence and determination to pressure the party into agreeing for Rabotnitsa to call a conference to discuss the best way to organise women for the revolutionary struggles taking place. In early October, Slutskaia, supported by Samoilova and Kollontai, finally persuaded the Petrograd Committee to agree to a Petrograd Conference of Working Women – to mobilise working-class women for the coming Constituent Assembly election, and to inform non-party women of those aspects of the Bolshevik programme most relevant to them. Slutskaia, in making the request, took care to stress that no independent women’s organisation would result from the conference.

Working women inspired by the conference would be expected to be organised through the trade unions and the Bolshevik Party. The conference would be the peak of an agitational campaign amongst the broad masses of working women, with the aim of preparing them to support the Bolshevik Party in the coming actions.

To publicise, prepare for, and organise the Conference, the party approved a diverse group – referred to as the Initiative Group – which comprised of women from the Rabotnitsa editorial board, party activists, and factory workers. On 10 October, the Third Petrograd Conference of the RSDLP(B) declared its support, called for the Conference to be held as soon as possible, and agreed to agitate in its support, including helping to organise elections of delegates from the factories and party districts. Conference sessions included: an address on the purpose of the conference; reports from the floor; the Constituent Assembly and the working woman; protection and insurance for women workers; bourgeois-feminist parties and the Constituent Assembly; and socialism and working woman. Speakers included Kudelli, Nikolaeva, Samoilova, Emiliia Solin (a telephone operator, and member of the Rabotnitsa editorial board), Lilina Zinov’eva (a columnist on Rabotnitsa), and Kollontai.

On 10 October, the Central Committee passed by ten to two Lenin’s resolution recognising that an armed uprising was inevitable (Kamenev and Zinoviev voted against).^[58] The following day Kamenev and Zinoviev circulated a statement entitled ‘On the Current Situation’, which came out decisively against the resolution of the Central Committee and gave their arguments against an uprising.^[59] The statement failed to appreciate that the peasants themselves had revolutionary interests (and were impatient to attain them), and in such a situation it was perfectly possible for the mass of peasants to vote for the SRs and simultaneously follow the proletariat in action. The latter would, of course, be the decisive factor, but such a conception was beyond the right wing.

On 16 October at the Central Committee, Lenin’s resolution for an uprising was passed twenty to two with three abstentions. Kamenev, with Zinoviev’s prior knowledge and support, published an open letter in New Life (Maxim Gorky’s paper) on 18 October, revealing the Bolsheviks’ intentions and publicly opposing an insurrection.^[60] On the morning of the Central Committee meeting on 20 October, Pravda published a letter by Zinoviev justifying his and Kamenev’s position, and that was accompanied by an editorial note written by the editor (Stalin) which ended with the sentence: “The sharp tone of comrade Lenin’s article does not change the fact that, fundamentally, we remain of one mind”.^[61] Stalin saw supporters and opponents of armed insurrection as being “of one mind”! With Lenin absent, the Central Committee decided not to expel Kamenev from the party but to accept his resignation from the CC. This was passed by five votes to three, with Stalin voting against.

In the meantime the Initiative Group was busy organising over seventy preparatory meetings in factories and workplaces, and distributing leaflets building the Petrograd Working Women’s Conference which was scheduled to be held over twelve days beginning 29 October 1917, and while there are contradictions in the timeline as remembered by different participants, all agree that the preparatory meetings were postponed due to the armed uprising, so that delegates could join the revolution, after which the Conference was re-convened.

Endnotes

[1] See T. Cliff, Lenin, Vol 1.

[2] See V. I. Lenin, ‘The Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry’, March 1905, LCW, Vol. 8.

[3] M. Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin, Merlin Press, 1975, p. 127.

[4] See E. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923.

[5] J. Stalin, Pravda No. 8, March 1917, CW, Vol. 3.

[6] E. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, pp. 86-7.

[7] See J. Roberts and J. Martín, Permanent Revolution in Latin America, Wellred Books, 2018.

[8] V. I. Lenin, ‘Third Letter from Afar’, March 1917, LCW, Vol. 23, p. 329.

[9] V. I. Lenin, ‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution’, April 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 70.

[10] V. I. Lenin, ‘Speech in Favour of the Resolution on the Current Situation’, April 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 308.

[11] See J. Stalin, 1917, Collected Works (henceforth referred to as CW), Vol. 3.

[12] See J. Roberts, China from Permanent Revolution to Counter Revolution, Wellred Books, 2016.

[13] I. Deutscher, Stalin, Pelican, 1966, p. 140.

[14] See J. Roberts, China.

[15] N. Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin, Panther History, 1970, p. 297.

[16] See C. Porter, Kollontai: A Biography.

[17] V. I. Lenin, ‘Letters on Tactics’, April 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 50.

[18] V. I. Lenin, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 22.

[19] See T. Cliff, Lenin.

[20] V. I. Lenin, ‘From a Publicists Diary’, August 1917, LCW, Vol. 25, p. 285.

[21] See L. Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects.

[22] V. I. Lenin, ‘Speech in Favour of the Resolution on the Current Situation’, April 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 308.

[23] See M. Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin, p. 134.

[24] See E. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923.

[25] See L. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification.

[26] See E. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923.

[27] See R. Daniels, Red October.

[28] See T. Cliff, Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation.

[29] C. Porter, Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography, Virago Press, 1980, p. 239.

[30] See A. McShane, ‘Bringing the Revolution to the Women of the East’.

[31] See M. Donald, ‘Bolshevik Activity Amongst the Working Women of Petrograd in 1917’.

[32] R. Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia, p. 302.

[33] See ibid.

[34] See B. Evans Clements, Bolshevik Women.

[35] See M. Donald, ‘Bolshevik Activity Amongst the Working Women of Petrograd in 1917’.

[36] See ibid.

[37] See J. Evans, ‘The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Women’s Question’.

[38] At this time the average wage of women workers was about 80 roubles per month.

[39] See A. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt.

[40] See D. Koenker, and W. Rosenberg, Understanding Strikes in 1917.

[41] Ibid.

[42] See M. Donald, ‘Bolshevik Activity Amongst the Working Women of Petrograd in 1917’.

[43] See S. Badcock, ‘Women, Protest, and Revolution: Soldiers’ Wives in Russia During 1917’.

[44] V. I. Lenin, ‘Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme’, June 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, pp. 455-480.

[45] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Resolution on the Attitude Towards the Provisional Government’, April 1917, LCW , Vol. 24.

[46] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Letter on Tactics’, April 1917, LCW, Vol. 24.

[47] See E. Rossi, ‘The Emancipation of Women in Russia Before and After the Russian Revolution’.

[48] A. Kollontai, ‘The Woman Worker and Peasant in Soviet Russia’, 1921. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/peasant.htm (accessed 4 January 2023).

[49] See M. Donald, ‘Bolshevik Activity Amongst the Working Women of Petrograd in 1917’.

[50] V. I. Lenin, ‘On Slogans’, July 1917, LCW, Vol. 24, p. 191.

[51] Ibid.

[52] V. I. Lenin, ‘From a Publicist’s Diary’, August 1917, LCW, Vol. 25, p. 285.

[53] See L. Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism.

[54] See R. Daniels, Red October.

[55] See V. I. Lenin, ‘Marxism and Insurrection’, September 1917, LCW, Vol. 26.

[56] V. I. Lenin, ‘Letter to the Central Committee’, October 1917, LCW, Vol. 26, p. 141.

[57] L. Trotsky, Lessons of October in The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), Pathfinder Press, 1975, p. 241.

[58] See N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal Record.

[59] See The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution, Central Committee Minutes August 1917 – February 1918, Pluto Press, 1974.

[60] See ibid.

[61] See ibid, p. 121.