Part III¶
Core Argument¶
Following the Petrograd victory, the Military Revolutionary Committee held the capital but remained isolated from the provinces. The Petrograd Telegraph Agency refused to transmit Bolshevik decrees, while hostile telegrams from army committees, Town Councils, and Zemstvos threatened war. On 8th November, Lenin and Zinoviev addressed the Petrograd Soviet; that evening, the Congress of Soviets unanimously adopted the decrees on peace and land and formed the Council of People’s Commissioners. The Bolshevik Central Committee invited the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to join the government, but they hesitated, demanding a coalition of all Soviet parties. The Mensheviks and Right Socialist Revolutionaries had already broken with the Congress, so the Bolsheviks formed an exclusively Bolshevik government despite the political risk.
The new regime printed and distributed the decrees widely, but faced passive resistance from higher and middle officials, organised by the former Soviet parties. On 9th and 10th November, threats arrived from army committees and the railway union. Bourgeois youth and cadets disarmed Red Guards and seized the Telephone Exchange. A Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, led by Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, organised cadets and officers. On 11th November, cadets at the Cadet School refused to surrender and fired on Red Guards and sailors. Artillery from the Peter and Paul Fortress breached the walls; the cadets surrendered. Some were killed or arrested. The rising was crushed, and papers calling for insurrection were suppressed. Military resistance in the capital ended.
A prolonged struggle with official sabotage followed. Kerensky fled to the front and, with General Krasnov, led Cossack echelons toward Petrograd. The garrison of Tsarskoye Selo failed to stop them. Agitation and fraternisation, which had defeated Kornilov, failed against Krasnov’s Cossacks. The Petrograd garrison was uncertain; the military machine was disorganised by sabotage. The Bolsheviks appealed directly to workers, who built up artillery, dug trenches, and organised supply. Sailors and Red Guards formed the first line. On the night of 12th November, Trotsky and Colonel Muraviev motored to military positions, where Red Guards vigilantly checked passes. After artillery bombardment between Krasnoye Selo and Tsarskoye Selo, the Cossacks fell back, having been misled about Bolshevik atrocities. Trotsky wired a victory message from Pulkovo, declaring Kerensky’s repulse decisive. Krasnov’s Cossacks retreated to Gatchina, where Krasnov and his staff were taken prisoner. Kerensky fled. In Moscow, the struggle was protracted and bloody, partly because revolutionary leaders hesitated. Trotsky argues that only a resolute offensive secures victory; hesitation reflects the masses’ lack of political self-confidence and the pressure of bourgeois opinion.
The Constituent Assembly, fixed for late November, was doomed by delays and the fact that old party lists, drawn up before the split, forced peasants to vote for lists headed by Kerensky’s name. The months before the November Revolution saw masses flowing to the Bolsheviks and the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party growing at the expense of the right, yet three-quarters of SR party-list names were right-wing leaders discredited by coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie. Elections occurred in the first weeks after the November Revolution; news spread slowly from capitals to provinces. Peasants, vaguely aware of events, nominally voted for ‘Land and Liberty’ and their land-committee representatives, but effectively voted for Kerensky and Avksentiev, who were dissolving those committees. This produced a paradox: the Left SRs, who would help dissolve the Constituent Assembly, were elected on the same lists as the party that won a majority there. The Constituent Assembly was thus a belated product compared with actual party differentiation.
As Marxists, we never worshipped formal democracy. In a class-divided society, democratic institutions imperfectly express class struggle; in revolution, the direct struggle for power lets masses gain political experience faster than democracy’s ponderous mechanism can keep pace. The Right SRs had a majority in the Assembly but had refused government before November, handing power to the liberal bourgeoisie and losing revolutionary influence. By November, the working class, Red Guard, army, and sailors were hostile to them; they had been forced from