All Power to the Soviets!¶
Core Argument¶
Lenin’s chapter dissects the political trajectory of the Russian Revolution from February to July 1917, arguing that the initial period of peaceful development has been irrevocably closed by counter-revolutionary violence. The core claim is that after the July Days, the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ ceased to be correct because the Soviets themselves, dominated by Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) leaders, had become impotent accomplices of the bourgeoisie. Between 27 February and 4 July, a peaceful transfer of power to the Soviets had been possible because arms were in the people’s hands and no external force coerced them. That window has now shut. Real state power has passed to a counter-revolutionary military clique—the Cadets, monarchists, and their Cavaignac-like generals—who shoot soldiers, disarm workers, and close Bolshevik newspapers. The Menshevik and SR ministers, having entered a coalition government on 6 May, have become puppet abettors of this butchery.
Lenin analyses three political crises—20–21 April, 10 and 18 June, and 3–4 July—to show they share a common root: mass dissatisfaction with the bourgeois Provisional Government. Each took the form of a demonstration that was more than a demonstration but less than a revolution, an outburst of both revolution and counter-revolution. The petty-bourgeois SRs and Mensheviks, by blaming both Bolsheviks and Cadets, reveal their failure to understand the fundamental class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Prince Lvov, Lenin notes, openly admitted that Russia’s internal situation is one of civil war, with two hostile camps, and that the bourgeoisie had made a ‘breach in the front’ of the revolutionary workers—a truth for which the Bolsheviks had been abused. The ‘breach’ consisted of slander, arrests, outlawing of opponents, murder in the streets, and disarming of revolutionary soldiers.
The movement of 3–4 July was the last attempt to force the Soviets to take power. Instead, the SRs and Mensheviks handed power to the counter-revolution. The Bolshevik Central Committee had called for a peaceful and organised demonstration; the movement was spontaneous, and the Party tried to control it. The shooting was started by counter-revolutionaries. Lenin answers the espionage charges against him as a Beilis-style slander, detailing his arrest in Austria in 1914 and his lack of contact with Parvus. Kerensky’s cabinet, he argues, marks the beginning of Bonapartism: state power manoeuvres between two balanced hostile classes, leaning on the military clique. The revolution’s first phase has failed: the death penalty is restored, newspapers closed, Bolsheviks arrested, the war of conquest resumed, and the Constituent Assembly postponed. The petty-bourgeois small owner has no alternative under capitalism: either become a capitalist or be ruined. The Russian revolution most strikingly confirmed the old Marxist truth that the petty bourgeoisie’s position is unstable. The task now is to prepare for armed insurrection to transfer power to the proletariat supported by the poor peasants, while maintaining all possible legal work and forming illegal organisations. Only revolutionary workers can smash capitalist resistance and lead the people to land, liberty, and peace.