From Tsar To Soviets by Christopher Reed

Author:Christopher Reed [Reed, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781135366261
Google: QQPFDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-11-10T15:52:24+00:00

Lenin’s campaign for an insurrection

In early September Lenin, increasingly excited by the potential for revolution he sensed from scrutinizing the newspapers brought to him in his Finnish hideout, began, once again, to grasp the situation by the scruff of its neck. At first, he seemed to be toying with the prevailing liberal spirit. In early September he wrote an article suggesting that perhaps a peaceful Soviet takeover might be possible, a startling reversal of his insistence, since the July Days, that only armed uprising was on the cards. This dalliance, induced by the broad anti-Kornilov movement, was short-lived, and, perhaps, only intended for public consumption anyway. It was soon replaced by an urgent series of appeals to the Central Committee to implement the policy of armed uprising. The sequence of increasingly frustrated letters with which Lenin bombarded his colleagues is quite astonishing. At one point he offered to resign in order to take his fight to the membership. At other times he tried to bypass them, arguing that perhaps the revolution might begin in Moscow (where in fact the balance of forces was much less favourable to the Bolsheviks than in Petrograd) or, even more bizarrely, in Helsinki where a regional Congress of Soviets was due to be held. In his increasingly frenzied determination to launch an uprising both dimensions of Lenin’s approach—questions of immediate tactics to strengthen the necessary link with the masses and the larger theoretical underpinnings and aspirations— became inextricably intertwined.

The swings in Lenin’s advice were unprecedented. The first communication, written on 30 August at the height of the Kornilov crisis, urged that the task of the left was not to take over but to put pressure on Kerensky to “arrest Miliukov”, “arrest Rodzianko” and adopt left policies on arming workers, transferring land and establishing workers’ control.25 The next, and equally un-Lenin-like contribution if only because of its title, “On compromises”, urged that the Bolsheviks should agree to “a government of SRs and Mensheviks” (who were now suitably redefined as “our nearest adversaries” to distinguish them from “our direct and main class enemy the bourgeoisie”) in which the Bolsheviks would make no claim to participate.26 In “The tasks of the revolution”, written in the first half of September, the emphasis again was on “ensur[ing] the peaceful development of the revolution”27 through transferring power to the soviets, a move that would be supported by such an overwhelming majority of the population that resistance would be impossible. At the same time as this article was written for publication, Lenin began to urge, in secret, something rather different, namely that “The Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of both capitals, can and must take state power into their own hands”.28 Clearly Lenin was still driven by his hidden agenda. His colleagues, however, did nothing to act on his suggestion. This made Lenin’s tone considerably more shrill in his next letters. To say that insurrection was un-Marxist was, he snapped, one of “the most vicious and probably most widespread distortions of Marxism” and “an opportunist lie”.

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