SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1917: THE PRE-PARLIAMENT
The reality of the pre-parliament is clearly described in the memoirs of Nikolai Avksentev, one of the leaders of the right wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries.[6] From February 1917 he was president of the executive committee of peasant soviets; in July he was appointed Interior Minister; and in September he became president of the provisional soviet of the Russian Republic (the pre-parliament).
His narrative offers the impression of a solemn session in some luxurious palace – in fact, an utterly sterile gathering united only by hatred for the Bolsheviks – when on the outside a quite different system was already being conceived. With much bitterness, Avksentev vividly describes the internal divisions within each group (all the parties were fissiparous). The situation possessed the typical features of a case of stalemate and impotence, a glaring example of which had been the meeting in Nicholas II’s headquarters at the front a year earlier, when he had proved incapable of doing anything except endlessly reshuffling his government while everything around him was collapsing. Further examples of such paralysis could be cited. The screenplay is different on each occasion, but the spectacle is the same: the political impotence of the key players of the moment. The efforts in September-October 1917 to regain control of events are a classic of the genre.
Avksentev and his associates tried to stabilize the situation by calling on the representatives of the soviets to accept a minority position in the ‘pre-parliament’ that the Democratic Assembly was about to constitute. A majority position was offered to ‘property-owners’ – that is to say, the organizations and parties representing the middle classes. The Democratic Assembly met in mid-September in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, who participated at the outset, wanted to exclude the property-owners completely and to create a purely socialist government, which they declared themselves ready to support. This position was of interest only to a small left-wing group in the Menshevik Party, led by Martov. The Democratic Assembly proceeded to elect 250 members according to their party’s relative strength in the Assembly; and 250 other persons were added from various middle-class and business milieux. These representatives were supposed to provide political and moral support for the government. According to Avksentev, this was necessary because ‘the government enjoyed no other support whatsoever’.
The situation described by Avksentev is one paradox wrapped up in another. The democratic camp offered the property-owners a majority in order to secure legitimacy for the government, without seeing that the soviets (which they led) were the only source of legitimate support. Thus, they sought support from elements who possessed nothing like the power of the soviets. Avksentev understood this very welclass="underline" he extolled the efforts made by the heads of the soviets to organize the bourgeoisie and bring it into the political fray, and yet he noted: ‘this only served to highlight the weakness of the bourgeoisie’ – something for which neither the Bolsheviks nor the democratic forces were responsible. In the coalition government, the democrats (i.e. the socialists) had mass support (in the soviets), while their bourgeois allies had none. Yet the democratic forces continued to offer parity – even a majority – in the Assembly to bourgeois elements who had nothing to offer except their weakness, but who demanded a high price for it.
Avksentev stresses the debilitating character of the whole process of trying to establish an utterly artificial coalition. It yielded only petty squabbles, failing to produce unity or the kind of succour the government needed.
The remaining Provisional Government ministers – Kerensky, Tereshchenko and others – then embarked on negotiations with different protagonists in the Winter Palace. All sides were aware that the country was on the road to ruin and that unity was urgently required. Yet each of them stuck to their sacrosanct ‘formula’, fearful lest the masses on the outside cry treason if their magical terms were abandoned. The bickering focused on minor questions of dogma, even simple points of grammar. While the nitpicking proceeded within the palace walls, outside a storm was brewing that would soon sweep them all away.
In the meantime, a coalition government was formed and another body – the Provisional Council of the Republic – set up. The latter was to be inaugurated at the beginning of October, to give the Cadets and property-owners enough time to select their representatives. Negotiations continued on the composition of its presidium. Avksentev recounts them in great detail and finally brings us to the solemn meeting of the Provisional Council on 7 October, at 3 PM, in the Marinsky Palace – the very hall where the Tsar convened his Grand State Council. The hall was full; the diplomatic corps was present in its loggias; applause greeted Kerensky, who opened the session. Yet as Avksentev recounts, ‘one did not sense any real conviction that a great new beginning was under way… A unitary institution had been created for the democrats and the bourgeoisie, but there was no unity in it… and the contradictions remained just as potent’. People were more concerned with words than deeds. The Left insisted on peace and the agrarian question, whereas these were things the Cadets would not countenance. Avksentev was in agreement with the latter, and sought to persuade the Mensheviks to exclude contentious items from the final document that was to be adopted. According to Avksentev, it was the soviets – in other words their Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders – who demonstrated their impotence at a critical moment and failed to support the government. So much for Avksentev’s account.
Avksentev accused the ‘democratic Left’ of programmatic inflexibility. In fact, it had no independent political programme corresponding to its actual strength. Its representatives placed all their hopes in the Cadets and other bourgeois elements, while the Cadets only had eyes for the monarchists. Like the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks were divided, and neither party could offer anything clear of their own or accept anything proposed by other forces. When Martov called for a purely socialist government based on the soviets, his position at least possessed the merit of clarity – but it commanded only a small minority of his party.
As everyone argued against the Bolsheviks, there was no prospect of socialism. Here the Mensheviks and others were perfectly right. However, while they already possessed considerable power, this did not fit their ‘formula’. The latter required that they persuade the middle classes to opt for a democratic system. But the bourgeoisie was in disarray and did not wish to participate in such a government. So this raises the question: What were the Mensheviks right about? As Miliukov clearly understood, the ‘middle classes’ whom everyone was counting on were a phantom army politically; and the liberals who should have been their political leaders dreamed only of taming the beast and finding someone with an iron fist. The country was falling apart and there was no central government available capable of averting total chaos.
The monarchist Right saw no other way of resolving matters than through military force and recourse to terror; and they made no secret of it. But what system were they planning to establish once the rioters had been hanged from the lampposts? Many of the White generals looked to the past for a model – a return to the monarchy that they still believed feasible. In the first months of 1917, these stalwarts of the old regime seemed to have been shown the door. Yet Kornilov’s abortive coup in August and the fact that the liberals supported him should have rung alarm bells. Kornilov’s target was not just the Bolsheviks but the whole of the Left, the Provisional Government, and the forces behind it. For the military and other right-wing circles, the leaders of the soviets were guilty of perpetrating a crime – the equivalent of what the German Right was to denounce after the defeat of 1918, or the myth of the ‘stab in the back’ by the enemy within. The introduction of soviets into the army on the initiative of the leaders of the civilian soviets was an affront to the officer corps and, in its view, undermined the troops’ fighting ability. The future White forces (including many ‘Black Hundreds’) needed time to regroup. They dreamt of then retaking Moscow, having the bells of its hundred of churches tolled, and then restoring the empire with a Tsar at its head.