At its third session on October 15, the Soviet acquired a formal organization. Present were 226 delegates from 96 industrial enterprises. Socialists came in force, too, among them the Bolsheviks, who had initially boycotted the Soviet because they opposed the formation “of organs of proletarian self-rule before power had been seized.”†
At the October 15 session an organizational step was taken which, although hardly noticed at the time, would have the most weighty consequences in February 1917, when the St. Petersburg Soviet was resuscitated. An Executive Committee (Ispolnitenyi Komitet, or Ispolkom for short) of thirty-one persons was formed: fourteen from the city’s boroughs, eight from the trade unions, and nine (29 percent) from the socialist parties. The latter allotted three seats each to the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the Social-Democratic Party and three to the Socialists-Revolutionaries. The socialist intellectuals were not elected by the Soviet but appointed by their respective parties. Although they had only a consultative vote, their experience and organizational skills assured them of a dominant role in the Ispolkom and, through it, the Soviet at large. In 1917, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet would consist exclusively of intellectuals nominated by the socialist parties.115 The rising influence of the radical intelligentsia found expression in an appeal to the workers issued by the Soviet on October 15 with an explicit threat of physical coercion against strikebreakers. “Who is not with us is against us, and to them the Soviet of Deputies has decided to apply extreme methods—force.” The appeal urged the strikers forcibly to shut down shops which ignored the strike and to prevent the distribution of government newspapers.116
At the meeting of October 17, the Soviet adopted the name Soviet of Workers’ Deputies (Sovet rabochikh deputatov) and expanded the Executive Committee to fifty, with the socialist parties being allotted seven seats each, for a total of twenty-one (42 percent). It was decided to issue Izvestiia as the Soviet’s official organ.
Similar soviets sprang up in some fifty provincial cities, as well as certain rural areas and in a few military units, but the St. Petersburg Soviet enjoyed from the beginning a position of undisputed primacy.
In the evening of October 14, Witte was in receipt of a telegram from Peterhof asking him to appear the following morning with the draft of a manifesto. Witte claims that he was unable to write the manifesto because he was feeling unwell, and entrusted the task to Alexis Obolenskii, a member of the State Council who happened to be spending the night at his home.117 Since it is unlikely that he failed to realize the importance of this document, and he appeared healthy enough both before and after the event, the more likely explanation for his missing this unique opportunity to make history was the fear of bearing the blame for a step which he knew the Tsar took with the utmost distaste. If one is to believe him, he first familiarized himself with the manifesto the following morning aboard a ship which was taking him and Obolenskii to Peterhof (the railroads being on strike).118*
For his basic text, Obolenskii drew on the resolutions of the Zemstvo Congress held in Moscow on September 12–15. The zemtsy had rejected the Bulygin Duma as entirely inadequate, and offered their own program:
1. Guarantees of personal rights, freedom of speech and publication, freedom of assembly and association;
2. Elections to the Duma on the basis of a universal franchise;
3. The Duma to be given a determining voice in legislation as well as control over the state budget and the administration.119
In drafting his text, Obolenskii borrowed not only the contents but also the format of the September Zemstvo Congress resolutions. As a result, the substantive part of the October Manifesto turned out to be little more than a paraphrase of the zemstvo demands.
The Tsar spent most of October 15 with Witte and other dignitaries discussing and editing the manifesto. Among those he consulted was Trepov, in whose judgment and good faith he retained unbounded confidence. He forwarded to him Witte’s memorandum and the draft of the manifesto, requesting his frank opinion. Even while getting ready to sign the manifesto, Nicholas must still have contemplated resort to military force, for he also asked Trepov how many days he thought it possible to maintain order in St. Petersburg without bloodshed and whether it was altogether feasible to reassert authority without numerous victims.120
In his response the next day (October 16), Trepov agreed in general with Witte’s proposals, even as he urged restraint in making concessions to the liberals. To the question whether he could restore order in the capital without risking a massacre, he answered that
he could give no such guarantee either now or in the future: rebellion [kramola] has attained a level at which it was doubtful whether [bloodshed] could be avoided. All that remains is faith in the mercy of God.121
Still unconvinced, Nicholas asked Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich to assume dictatorial powers. The Grand Duke is said to have responded that the forces for a military dictatorship were unavailable and that unless the Tsar signed the manifesto he would shoot himself.122
On October 17, Witte presented the Tsar with a report (doklad) summarizing the rationale for the manifesto which was to be issued jointly with it. Here he restated the conviction that the unrest afflicting Russia resulted neither from specific flaws in the country’s political system nor from the excesses of the revolutionaries. The cause had to be sought deeper, “in the disturbed equilibrium between the intellectual strivings of Russia’s thinking society and the external forms of its life.” The restoration of order, therefore, required fundamental changes. In the margin, Nicholas wrote: “Adopt for guidance.”123
That evening, having crossed himself, Nicholas signed the manifesto. Its operative part consisted of three articles paralleling the three-part resolution of the September 1905 Zemstvo Congress:
We impose on the government the obligation to carry out our inflexible wilclass="underline"
1. To grant the population inviolable foundations of civil liberty [based] on the principles of genuine inviolability of person, the freedoms of conscience, speech, assembly, and association;
2. Without postponing the projected elections to the State Duma, insofar as possible, in view of the short time that remains before the convocation of that body, to include in its work those classes of the population which until now have been entirely deprived of the right to vote, and to extend in the future, through the new legislature, the principle of universal franchise; and,
3. To establish as inviolate the rule that no law shall acquire force without the approval of the State Duma and that the people’s representatives shall have an effective opportunity to participate in supervising the legality of the actions of the authorities whom We have appointed.*
Before retiring, Nicholas wrote in his diary: “After such a day, the head has grown heavy and thoughts have become confused. May the Lord help us save and pacify Russia.”
The proclamation of the October Manifesto, accompanied by Witte’s report of October 17, set off tumultuous demonstrations in all the cities of the Empire: no one had expected such concessions. In Moscow, a crowd of 50,000 gathered in front of the Bolshoi Theater. Thousands also assembled spontaneously in the other cities, singing and cheering. On October 19, the St. Petersburg Soviet voted to end the general strike.124 The strike also collapsed in Moscow and elsewhere.