Despite the danger of detection, Podvoisky, then sought by the authorities, was forced to appear and defend the Military Organization at the Second City Conference on July 16 and at the Sixth Party Congress on July 28.43 Moreover, at the Sixth Congress the Military Organization was the subject of a formal inquiry by a specially organized military section. Boris Shumiatsky, a delegate to the Sixth Congress from the mid-Siberian Bureau of the party and evidently a member of the section, subsquently related that at the congress, Bukharin, Kamenev, and Trotsky (the last two presumably by written messages or through intermediaries) insisted on the necessity of dissolving the Military Organization on the grounds that it overlapped the work of regular party organs. According to Shumiatsky, a majority of the military section rejected this position, acknowledging the necessity of maintaining a special Military Organization under the Central Committee. In the published materials on the Sixth Congress, the debate and decision concerning the Military Organization's status are reflected in the military section's final communique, which, among other things, announced the adoption of the following resolution by a vote of eight to four: "Because of a whole series of peculiarities in living conditions and in professional and organizational matters [pertaining to] the existence and work of party members in the armed forces, the section sanctions the existence below the Central Committee, under its constant and direct supervision, of a special Military Organization to direct the everyday work of the party in the armed forces."44
Despite the authorities' active search for them, the Military Organization's most important officials, Nevsky and Podvoisky, managed to evade arrest following the July days. Although Podvoisky was twice detained by military patrols, he was able to conceal his identity. Nevsky, who had incurred a minor bullet wound in the leg during a shooting incident on July 4, fled to the provinces. Shortly after Nevsky's return to Petrograd in mid-July, officials of the Military Organization still at large, among them Podvoisky, Nevsky, Ilin-Zhenevsky, and Mikhail Kedrov, met secretly at the apartment of Genrikh Yagoda to assess their losses and discuss future strategy. According to Ilin-Zhenevsky, participants in this meeting agreed for the time being to try "to combine underground activity with legal work," that is, to maintain a central headquarters under cover and, as feasible, to resume open organization and agitational activity among the troops.45
One of the goals set by Military Organization officials at this meeting was to resume, as quickly as possible, publication of a Bolshevik newspaper for soldiers, along the lines of the now illegal Soldatskaia pravda. During the third week of July Podvoisky finally found a press willing to produce such a paper, and the first issue appeared on July 23. The new organ, Rabochii i soldat, was to be edited by Podvoisky, Nevsky, and Ilin-Zhenevsky, and managed by Kedrov and Yagoda.46 All appeared to be going well with the paper until complications arose at a Central Committee meeting on August 4. This was the first meeting of the new Central Committee elected by the Sixth Congress. Since the committee did not yet have a paper to replace Pravda, it decided to appropriate Rabochii i soldat. Moreover, obviously
Key members of the Bolshevik Military Organization. Top row, left to right: P. V. Dash- kevich, N. I. Podvoisky, V. I. Nevsky. Second row: V. R. Menzhinsky, S. N. Sulimov, A. F. Ilin-Zhenevsky, M. S. Kedrov, E. F. Rozmirovich. Third row: A. D. Sadovsky, K. N. Orlov, N. V. Krylenko, N. K. Beliakov, K. A. Mekhonoshin. Fourth row: R. F. Sivers, S. M. Dimanshtein. Fifth row: F. P. Khaustov, S. M. Nakhimson.
mindful of the organizational control problems experienced in June and July, it resolved that for the time being, neither the Petersburg Committee nor the Military Organization would be permitted to publish a separate paper.47
The Central Committee went on to stipulate that the editorial board of
Rabochii i soldat would be composed of Stalin, Sokolnikov, and Miliutin from its own membership and one representative each from the Military Organization and the Petersburg Committee, subsequently designated as Podvoisky and Volodarsky, respectively. This arrangement was profoundly distasteful to Military Organization officials, who were accustomed to working on their own, were jealous of their prerogatives, and were convinced, as Podvoisky put it at the time, that "a combined news organ" could neither fulfill the objectives of the Military Organization nor meet the needs of the soldier masses among whom the Military Organization conducted propaganda and agitation.48 The fate of Rabochii i soldat was sealed on August 10 when a particularly inflammatory editorial provided the Provisional Government with an excuse to shut down the paper. Hurriedly, the Central Committee now made new7 publishing arrangements. Without clearance from the Central Committee, the Military Organization did the same. Thus, on August 13, for the first time since the July days, two Bolshevik papers, the Central Committee's Proletarii and the Military Organization's Soldat, appeared on Petrograd newsstands.
When the Central Committee got wind of the Military Organization's independent action, it determined to take over Soldat as well and directed Stalin to inform Podvoisky of this decision. Moreover, to prevent the Military Organization from embarking on further publishing ventures, Smilga was ordered to appropriate, for use by the Central Committee, funds in the Military Organization's possession that had been earmarked for the publication of Rabochii i soldat.49 Stalin and Smilga apparently carried out their duties with firmness and dispatch, for on August 16 the Central Committee received two sharply worded appeals from the Military Organization's All-Russian Bureau.50 The first appeal insisted on the Military Organization's right to publish a separate newspaper, in terms which indicated that it would not be easy to get the Military Organization leaders to back down; the second protested "the unprincipled way, violating the most elementary principles of party democracy," in which Stalin and Smilga had dealt with the Military Organization and demanded that the Central Committee establish a more workable relationship with the bureau of the Military Organization so that the latter might carry out its responsibilities.51
There is evidence that around this time the Central Committee established another special commission to inquire into the Military Organization's affairs, primarily with relation to the organization of the July uprising and the publication of Rabochii i soldat and Soldat.52 Indeed, Nevsky related that Military Organization leaders were now subjected to a party "trial," during the course of which Bubnov, Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky, and Sverdlov were delegated to oversee various aspects of the Military Organization's activities.53 It is impossible to determine from existing evidence the relationship of this "trial" to the work of the military section at the Sixth Congress. In any case, the Military Organization was evidently
cleared of most charges against it, perhaps partly as a result of Lenin's intervention. Nevsky quotes Sverdlov as having told him that when Lenin learned that Sverdlov had been delegated to acquaint himself with the Military Organization, Lenin's advice was: "To acquaint yourself is necessary. It is necessary to help them, but there should be no pressure and no reprimands. To the contrary, they should be supported. Those who don't take risks never win. Without defeats there can be no victories."54