The Debate on Soviet Power: Minutes ofthe All-Russian Central Executive Committee ofSoviets, October 1917-January 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
82 Ronald I. Kowalski, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1991).
83 The following is based on: John Channon, 'The Bolsheviks and the Peasantry: The Land Question during the First Eight Months of Soviet Power', Slavonic and East European Studies 66, 4 (1988): 593-624; Keep, Russian Revolution, p. 5; Figes, Peasant Russia, ch. 3.
84 I. A. Trifonov Likvidatsiia ekspluatatorskikh klassov v SSSR (Moscow: Politizdat, 1975),
p. 90
over a fifth ofthe entire cultivated area. Following redistribution, about three- quarters of households had allotments of up to 4 desiatiny (4.4 hectares), plus a horse and one or two cows. This was sufficient for a basic level of subsistence, but no more.
If the slogan All Power to the Soviets' was widely understood to mean the transfer of power to a coalition consisting of all socialist parties, the Bolsheviks nevertheless went ahead on 26 October and formed a Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) exclusively from members of their own party. Talks with the Mensheviks and SRs to form a coalition government got under way, but were scuttled by the intransigence of hard-liners on all sides. Five Bolsheviks resigned from the Sovnarkom when ordered to withdraw from the talks, saying 'we consider a purely Bolshevik government has no choice but to maintain itself by political terror'. In due course, seven Left SRs didjoin the new government, having been assured that the Sovnarkom would be accountable to the VTsIK- somethingthat never happened-and they engineered the fusion ofVTsIKwith the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies, whose SR-dominated executive had backed military resistance to the Bolsheviks.
Soviet power was established with surprising ease, a reflection of the popularity of the idea of devolving power to the toilers.[133] In towns and regions with a relatively homogeneous working class, such as the Central Industrial Region or the mining settlements of the Urals, Bolsheviks and their Left SR and anarchist allies asserted 'soviet power' quickly with little opposition. In big commercial and industrial cities with a more diverse social structure, such as Moscow, Smolensk or the Volga cities of Kazan', Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, the Bolsheviks enjoyed a plurality of votes in the soviets but faced a strong challenge from the moderate socialist bloc. Here 'soviet power' was often established by the local military-revolutionary committee - of which there were 350 nationwide - or by the garrison. Finally, there were the less industrially developed towns, towns of more medium size, or the capitals of overwhelmingly agricultural provinces, such as those in the central Black Earth provinces, where the SRs and Mensheviks were heavily ensconced in the soviets. Here moderate socialists put up staunch resistance to soviet power, as did Cossacks and nationalist movements such as the Ukrainian Rada.
The Constituent Assembly symbolised the people's power at the heart of the revolution and the Bolsheviks made much political capital out of the Provisional Government's decision to postpone elections to it. Yet once in government, Lenin insisted that there could be no going back to a parliamentary regime now that soviet power, a superior form of democracy in his view, had been established. The Bolsheviks nevertheless decided to allow elections to go ahead. In all, 48.4 million valid votes were cast, of which the SRs gained 19.1m. (39.5 per cent), the Bolsheviks 10.9m. (22.5 per cent), the Kadets 2.2m. (4.5 per cent) and the Mensheviks 1.5m. (3.2 per cent). Over 7 million voted for non-Russian socialist parties, including two-thirds ofUkrainians. The SRs were thus the clear winners, their vote concentrated in the countryside. The main voters for the Bolsheviks were workers and 42 per cent of the 5.5m. soldiers.[134]This represented the peak of popular support for the Bolsheviks: hereinafter they would lose support as soldiers returned to their villages and as worker disaffection grew. On 5 January the Assembly opened in dispiriting circumstances. The delegates elected Chernov chair and voted to discuss the SR agenda. In the small hours of the morning, the sailor's leader, A. G. Zhelezniakov, announced that 'the guard is getting tired' and put an end to its proceedings for ever.
The Bolshevik seizure of power is often presented as a conspiratorial coup against a democratic government. It had all the elements of a coup - albeit one advertised in advance - except for the fact that a coup implies the seizure of a functioning state machine. Arguably, Russia had not had this since February. The reasons for the failure of the Provisional Government are not hard to pinpoint. Lacking legitimacy from the first, it relied on the moderate socialists in the Soviet to make its writ run. From summer, it was engulfed by a concatenation of crises - at the front, in the countryside, in the economy and in the non-Russian periphery. Few governments could have coped with such a situation, and certainly not without an army to rely on. Many argue that democratic government was a non-starter in Russia in i9i7. This may underestimate the extent of enthusiasm for 'democracy' in 1917. It is true, however, that from the first a heavily 'socialised' conception of democracy vied with a liberal conception tied to the defence of private property. Perhaps if the Petrograd Soviet had taken power in March when it had the chance, perhaps if it had hastened to summon the Constituent Assembly and to tackle the land question, the SRs and Mensheviks might have been able to consolidate a parliamentary regime. In the wake of the Kornilov rebellion, a majority of moderate socialists came round to the view that the coalition with the 'bourgeoisie' must end, but that, of course, was not their view in spring. More crucially, on the vital matter of the war there were many in the SR Party whose instincts were little different from those of Kerensky. Therein lay the rub. For the fate of democracy in 1917 was ultimately sealed by the decision of liberals and moderate socialists to continue the war. It was the war that focused the otherwise disparate grievances of the people. It was the war that exacerbated the deep polarisation in society to a murderous extent. It was the war, in the last analysis, that made the Bolshevik seizure of power irresistible.
The Bolsheviks satisfied the demands of tens of millions on the burning issues of peace and land, but their promise to transfer power to the soviets proved to be very short-lived and severely incomplete. Historians debate the extent to which the speedy rise of one-party dictatorship was due to Bolshevik authoritarianism or to circumstances. There can be little doubt that the Bolsheviks' course of action was powerfully dictated by circumstances such as an imploding economy, a collapsing army, spiralling lawlessness, a disintegrating empire, the fragmentation of state authority and, not least, by extensive opposition to their rule. At the same time, they were never blind instruments of fate. The lesson that Lenin and Trotsky drew from the experience of 1917 was that breadth of representation in government spelt weakness; and in their determination to re-establish strong government - something that millions craved - they did not scruple to use dictatorial methods. By closing the Constituent Assembly they signalled that they were ready to wage war in defence of their regime not only against the exploiting classes, but against the socialist camp. The dissolution of the assembly doomed the chances of democracy in Russia for seventy years and for that the Bolsheviks bear the largest share of blame. Yet the prospects for a democratic socialist regime had by this stage become extremely tenuous. True, some 70 per cent of peasants voted in the assembly elections, but they did so less out of enthusiasm for parliamentary politics than out of a desire to see the assembly legalise their title to the land. Once it became clear that they had no reason to fear on that score, they acquiesced in the assembly's dissolution. The grim fact is that by 1918 the real choice facing the Russian people was one between anarchy or some form of dictatorship.[135]
135
This argument is worked out in S. A. Smith,