The real turning point came in August 1917. The forces of order – the army, the landowners, the bureaucracy and the businessmen – did not fail to perceive the phantom status of the Provisional Government and began to pin their hopes on the new head of the army, Lavr Kornilov. Kornilov’s confused attempt at a coup was beaten back by the combined efforts of the socialist parties, but the Bolsheviks were the ones who reaped the political credit.
Understandably so – the socialist moderates had wagered on a strategy of coalitions uniting socialists and non-socialists, a strategy widely perceived as bankrupt. The masses began to agree with the Bolsheviks: a coalition vlast was a bourgeois vlast, and the bourgeois vlast was leading the country to ruin.
The accelerating polarization of Russian society confirmed what can be termed the ili-ili (either-or) strategy of the Bolsheviks. As Stalin wrote in August 1917:
Either, or!
Either with the landlords and capitalists, and then the complete triumph of the counterrevolution.
Or with the proletariat and the poor peasantry, and then the complete triumph of the revolution.
The policy of conciliation and coalition is doomed to failure.30
The moderate socialists followed the contrasting logic of ni-ni: neither the counterrevolutionary forces of the right nor the extremist forces on the left – neither Kornilov nor Lenin – but rather a broad coalition of constructive forces. The concrete makeup of the various coalitions shifted over the year, but they were always based on ni-ni logic. But the moderate socialists who placed their political wager on ni-ni coalitions saw their original prestige dissolve and their reputations destroyed.
Starting in September, Lenin began to bombard his fellow Bolsheviks with letters, articles, whatever it took, in order to convince them that the time for an uprising had come and could not be delayed. The stars were now all in alignment: coalition-mongering was completely discredited, the Bolsheviks had substantial majorities in the most important soviets, the peasants were taking matters into their own hands, a revolutionary situation was brewing in other countries at war. Any delay would mean a disastrous acceleration of economic and military collapse.
At a small meeting of Bolshevik leaders on 10 October Lenin got his way on the main point: the course was set for a seizure of power. Lenin wanted an immediate armed uprising but his party comrades steered a more prudent course. The Second Congress of Soviets, a gathering of representatives from local soviets throughout the country, was due to meet in a couple of weeks, and the Bolsheviks could connect the insurrection to the opening of the Second Congress. The Petrograd Soviet – now with a Bolshevik majority and chaired by Lev Trotsky – organized a Military Revolutionary Committee. This committee, created openly and legally, became the organ of insurrection and on the night of 24 October it deposed the Provisional Government by force. The Second Congress then accepted the greatness thrust on them by the Bolsheviks and announced the formation of a new vlast, one based directly on the soviets. On 25 October, Lenin emerged from hiding to announce that ‘the oppressed masses will themselves create a vlast’, one in which ‘the bourgeoisie will have no share whatsoever’.31 The next day, he became Chairman of an all-Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars.
In the chaotic days that followed, the new Bolshevik state began to emerge. Lenin desired and expected a coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries as the representative of the peasants in ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants’. Otherwise, he was dead set against anything that smelled of coalition or ‘conciliation’. Through much shuffling and hard-nosed negotiation at the top Lenin got his way, mainly because the masses shared his disgust with coalition.
Although the Bolsheviks were committed to holding elections for a Constituent Assembly, they accorded no legitimacy to anything but a vlast based directly on the soviets. When the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd on 5 January 1918 it was met with the demand that it recognize the sovereign authority of the soviets (and therefore the Bolshevik government). When the assembly refused, it was forcibly disbanded. The spirit of ili-ili, of polarization and civil war, had triumphed.
Petrograd to Moscow
On 12 March 1918 Lenin and Krupskaya again pulled up roots and boarded another train, this time accompanied by the entire Bolshevik government. For reasons of military security, Moscow was deemed a safer home for the new Soviet state than Petrograd. Lenin and Krupskaya were given rather spartan rooms in the Kremlin, adjoining the meeting rooms for the new government. This was the last move for Lenin. He never again left Moscow except to relax in nearby dachas (summer cottages).
Three train rides, three Lenins: in 1914 an obscure émigré seeking safe haven in wartime Europe, in 1917 a revolutionary politician emerging from the underground, in 1918 a grimly determined statesman travelling with the government of all the Russias.
The Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 had been a huge gamble, and even survival of the new ‘proletarian vlast’ was doubtful for most of the year 1918. Yet by the end of that year and for the first half of 1919 Lenin claimed that ‘things have turned out just as we said they would’. For a brief period he was a truly happy man, convinced that his heroic scenario was rapidly coming true on a global scale.
Before arriving at this point, however, Lenin had to face what seemed like an endless succession of crises. In 3 March 1918 a humiliating peace treaty was signed with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. Lenin had to use all his influence to compel the reluctant Bolsheviks to sign. On 6 July the Left SRS staged their own uprising in protest against the foreign and domestic policies of their coalition partners. The crushing of the uprising by the Bolsheviks was accompanied by an end to meaningful electoral competition in local and central soviets. In the summer civil war and intervention intensified. On 30 August Lenin was shot and severely wounded by an SR terrorist. In response the Bolsheviks unleashed what they termed a Red Terror against the ‘class enemy’.32
Out of this kaleidoscope of crises we shall take one Lenin document and try to see it in its full historical context. This particular document was only released after the fall of the Soviet Union and has since become rather notorious – indeed, it is often used as a sort of shorthand for the essential meaning of Lenin’s career. It is a telegram sent on 11 August 1918 to Bolsheviks in Penza, a province about 700 kilometres southeast of Moscow in the Volga region. Lenin demands energetic repression of peasant revolts that he blamed on kulaks (rich peasants):
To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists:
Comrades! The uprising in five counties by the kulaks must lead to
merciless suppression. This is demanded by the interest of the whole revolution, for there is now everywhere ‘the last decisive battle’ with kulakdom. An example needs to be set.