By summer the discourse of democracy put into circulation by the February Revolution was being overtaken by a discourse of class, a shift symbolized by the increasing use of the word 'comrade' instead of 'citizen' as the favoured mode of address. Given the underdevelopment of class relations in Russia, and the key role played in politics by such non-class groups as soldiers and nationalist movements, this was a remarkable development. After all, the language of class, at least in its Marxist guise, had entered politics only after 1905; yet it had been disseminated through endless strikes, demonstrations, speeches, leaflets, newspapers, and labour organizations. The layer of 'conscious' workers, drawn mainly from the ranks of skilled, literate young men, served as the conduit through which ideas of class and socialism passed to the wider workforce. The discourse proved easily assimilable, since it played on a deeply rooted distinction in popular culture between 'them', the verkhi, those at the top, and 'us', the nizy, those at the
bottom. In 1917 'we' could signify the working class, 'proletarian youth', 'working women', the 'toiling people', or 'revolutionary democracy'. 'They' could signify capitalists, landlords, army generals or, at its most basic, burzhui - anyone with education, an overbearing manner, soft hands, or spectacles. The antipathy shown towards such groups as engineers or rural schoolteachers testifies to how indiscriminate the rhetoric of class could become.
The discourse of class served to cement two contending power blocs and to articulate fundamentally opposed sets of values and visions of the social order. It was at the root of the process of political polarization that escalated from late summer. Doubtless the salience of this discourse was linked to the way in which the discourse of nation became appropriated by conservatives. Faced with what they perceived to be processes of elemental revolt and national disintegration, the £ Kadets appealed to the nation to cast aside class and sectional interest. g Yet if the class and nation became sharply counterposed, the discourse e of class was in part an attempt to contest the Kadet vision of the nation-g under-siege and to redefine the meaning of the nation in terms of the 1 toiling people, playing on the double sense of the Russian word narod, which means both 'common people' and 'nation'.
The fall of the Provisional Government
Kerensky became prime minister following the July Days, presenting himself as the 'man of destiny' summoned to 'save Russia'. His posturing merely masked his impotence. On 19 July, in a bid to halt the disintegration of the army, he appointed General L. С Kornilov Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Kornilov agreed to take up the post on condition that there was no interference by soldiers' committees in operational orders and that the death penalty was extended from soldiers at the front - already agreed - to those at the rear. Kerensky hoped to use the reactionary general to bolster his image as a strong man and restore the frayed ties with the Kadets, many of whom were openly talking about
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6. General Kornilov
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the need for a military dictatorship to save Russia from 'anarchy*. Kerensky and Kornilov agreed on the need to establish firm government' - code for suppressing the Bolsheviks - and each hoped to use the other to achieve his more particular ends. On 26 August, however, Kerensky lashed out at Kornilov after he received what seemed to be an ultimatum demanding that military and civil authority be placed in the hands of a supreme commander. Accusing Kornilov of conspiring to overthrow the government - and historians dispute as to whether he actually was- he sent a telegram relieving him of his duties. When Kornilov ignored the telegram and ordered troops to advance on Petrograd, he appears to have moved into open rebellion. His attempted coup, however, was poorly planned and the clandestine
counter-revolutionary organizations that had looked to him as their saviourfailed to respond. In a humiliating bid to save his government, Kerensky was forced to turn to the very Soviets he had been planning to bring to heel, since they alone could prevent Kornilov's troops reaching the capital.
Kornilov's rebellion dramatically demonstrated the danger posed by the 'counter-revolution' and starkly underlined the feebleness of the Kerensky regime. No one, however, could have predicted that its immediate consequence would be to allow the Bolsheviks to stage a dramatic recovery, following their defeat in the July Days. On 31 August the Petrograd Soviet passed the Bolshevik resolution 'On Power', and the Moscow Soviets followed on 5 September. In the first half of that month, 80 Soviets in large and medium towns backed the call for a transfer of power to the Soviets, although no one was entirely sure what the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' - which belonged just as much to anarchists, Left SRs, and Menshevik Internationalists as to the Bolsheviks - actually meant. Whilst in hiding Lenin had written his most Utopian work, State and Revolution, outlining his vision of a 'commune state' in which the three pillars of the bourgeois state (the police, standing army, and the bureaucracy) would be smashed and in which parliamentary democracy would be replaced by direct democracy based on the Soviets. It is unlikely that many, even in the Bolshevik party, understood the slogan in this way. For most workers it meant a break with the coalition with the 'bourgeoisie', represented by the Provisional Government, and the formation of an all-socialist government representing all parties in the Soviet CEC.
The Bolshevik slogans of 'Bread, Peace, and Land' and 'All Power to the Soviets' were now taken up with alacrity. The party's consistent opposition to the government of 'capitalists and landowners', its rejection of the 'imperialist' war, and its calls for land to the peasants, power to the Soviets, and workers' control seemed to hundreds of thousands of workers and soldierstooffer a way forward. Seeing this
happen from his hiding-place in Finland, Lenin became convinced that nationally as well as internationally the time was now ripe for the Bolsheviks to seize power in the name of the Soviets. He blitzed the Central Committee with demands that it prepare an insurrection, even threatening to resign on 29 September.'History will not forgive us if this opportunity to take power is missed.' The majority of the leadership was unenthusiastic, believing that it would be better to allow power to pass democratically to the Soviets by waiting for the Second Congress of Soviets, scheduled to open on 20 October. Lenin returned in secret to Petrograd and on 10 October persuaded the Central Committee to commit itself to the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Significantly, no timetable was set. Zinoviev and Kamenevwere bitterly opposed to the decision, believing that the conditions for socialist revolution did not yet exist and that an insurrection was likely to be crushed. Lenin, however, argued that only by seizing power would popular support for a soviet government be consolidated. As late as 16 October, the mood in the party was against an insurrection and the decision of Zinoviev and Kamenevto make public their opposition drove Lenin to paroxysms of fury. It fell to Trotsky to make the practical preparations, which he did, not by following Lenin's scheme to launch an offensive against the capital by sailors and soldiers of the northern front, but by associating the insurrection with the defence of the Petrograd garrison and the Soviet.