The Struggle for the Masses¶
Core Argument¶
In the crucible of 1917, the struggle for the masses was fought and won in the Soviets. The Bolsheviks understood that to lead the revolution, they needed a majority of the working class, which meant winning these democratic organs of power, initially dominated by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (SRs) who clung to a coalition with bourgeois liberals. The Bolshevik campaign for new Soviet elections gained decisive momentum with the Kornilov affair. The spectre of counter-revolution radicalised the masses, driving the Soviets to demand resolute action and making Bolshevik slogans resonate with unprecedented force.
The turning point came on 1 September, when the Petrograd Soviet passed a Bolshevik resolution for a workers’ and peasants’ government by 229 votes to 115, forcing the reformist leadership to resign. At a heated session on 9 September, Trotsky’s blistering attack on the presidium for including Kerensky set the stage for a decisive vote: 519 against the Coalition, 414 for. This Bolshevik victory unleashed a powerful tide. The party swept Petrograd, Moscow, the northern territories, Kronstadt, Finland, and Estonia. In the factory committees, Bolsheviks had won control by June-July; by October, at the third All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees, over half the 167 voting delegates were Bolsheviks. Among the trade unions, the party advanced rapidly, winning control of the Petrograd metal workers’ union by April and securing a strong position in the main industrial unions by August. At the Democratic Conference in September, 58 per cent of delegates were Bolsheviks. Party membership swelled from 80,000 in April to 240,000 by August.
The Bolsheviks also contested local elections to reach the widest layers of society, despite this being less favourable terrain than factory or union elections. In the Moscow local elections of September, they won an absolute majority in an important urban centre for the first time, surging from 12% in June to 51% (198,230 votes), while the SRs collapsed from 58% to 14% and the Mensheviks from 12% to 4%. In Petrograd, a similar trend emerged: between August and November, the Bolshevik vote rose from 184,000 to 424,000, while the SR vote fell from 206,000 to 152,000. The Cadets rose from 114,000 to 274,000, and the Mensheviks increased marginally from 24,000 to 29,000, but this could not disguise their effective elimination as a real force in the capital’s working class. The Bolsheviks had won the masses.