HOW SOVIET POWER WAS AFFIRMED

By Tatyana Shvetsova
 
 

On November 8th 1917 the French Ambassador to Russia Josef Noulence sent the following telegram to his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “This morning I met with socialists-revolutionaries, members of the Central Executive Committee, Sirs Gotz and Zenzinov, who confirmed the following: firstly, all socialist factions, even the most  advanced, have decisively broken with the Bolsheviks, who, by all accounts, are most confused and disappointed over their sudden isolation.” Russian newspapers of the end of 1917 are brimming with dramatic reports: “A menacing situation has developed at the frontline…” “Separatism reigns along with a complete collapse of central authority. The workers are striking…” “Soldiers revolt…” “Gentry estates are being raided and burned to the ground.  Crime is rampant on an alarming scale. There is a marked exacerbation of overall anger and anarchy…” Analyzing the situation, the leader of the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin drew attention to “the concentrated-desperate mood of the broad masses, fully aware that the situation cannot be saved by half measures, and that there is no way of influencing it, that ‘the hungry, endangered mob would tear everything apart, in an anarchist manner, unless the Bolsheviks hurry to effectively take control over them in the decisive battle.” Lenin spurred his party on to settle the issue of power, for, as he put it “…the wave of genuine anarchy might grow stronger than we are.” So how did the Bolsheviks assert their power in Russia? This is the question we shall seek an answer to. Doctor of History Professor Alexei Voronin noted: “The success of the Bolsheviks in October 1917 not only failed to put an end to, but still exacerbated the struggle for power in the country. The new stage of this struggle falls on the period from autumn 1917 until spring of 1918, and is characterized by the shaky position of the Bolsheviks, forcing them to compromise and seek allies. This search eventually resulted in the emergence of a coalition with the aberrant left wing of the socialists-revolutionaries. In November 1917 the left socialists-revolutionaries entered the Soviet government.  A meeting of the Constitutive Assembly was scheduled for January 5th 1918, where it was planned to take up the issue of form of government in Russia. For up until January 1918 the first Bolshevist government officially referred to itself as the “Provisional Government of Workers and Peasants”.  According to historian Oleg Platonov “…the term ‘provisional’ signified that ostensibly the Bolsheviks had seized power temporarily, to provide for the convocation of the Constitutive Assembly and safeguard it from the ‘counterrevolutionaries’. They insisted they would pass power over into the hands of those representatives of the people, who would be elected by the Constituent Assembly. In actual fact, the Bolsheviks had no intention of relinquishing power, and only resorted to the word ‘provisional’ in the name of their government for the purpose of lulling the suspicions of the public opinion.  Further events proved the effectiveness of this tactic of the Bolsheviks in strengthening their power”. Historian Pyotr Deinichenko remarked: “The Bolsheviks had agreed with the left-wing socialist-revolutionaries to disperse the Constituent Assembly if it failed to approve the decrees and laws, adopted by the Bolshevist government. On the night of January 5th through 6th 1918 this is exactly what happened.” On the day of the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks put up for discussion their Declaration of rights of the Exploited Working People. This Declaration proclaimed Russia a Republic of the Soviets and announced that all central and local power was in their hands. Besides, the Bolsheviks offered the Assembly to adopt the decrees of the Bolshevist government regarding nationalization of banks, workers’ monitoring and supervision, and a number of others. Of the 410 deputies attending the Constituent Assembly only 136 voted in favor – all of them members of the Bolshevist party. A majority of the other deputies refused to approve the Bolshevist documents.

In protest the Bolsheviks and left-wing socialist-revolutionaries left the Assembly.

As to what followed, contemporary historian Professor Olshtynsky says:

“The remaining part of the deputies continued their meeting until 5 in the morning. At that moment the sentry unit head, anarchist sailor Anatoly Zheleznyakov approached socialist-revolutionary Victor Chernov, Chairman of the Assembly, and pronounced the historical phrase: “The Sentry are tired!” Victor Chernov announced that the meeting was being postponed until the following day – January 6th 1918. However, on that day the Bolshevist All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a Decree dispersing the Constituent Assembly. The demonstrations organized by Mensheviks and socialist-revolutionaries in support of the Constituent Assembly failed to impact the situation.

Let us add that these peaceful demonstrations were fired at by the Bolsheviks. 
The final decision on  the state set up of Russia and regarding the fate of the Constituent Assembly was taken by the III Congress of Soviets, whose decisions were approved in January 1918 by Congresses of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.

Professor Alexei Voronin noted:

“The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly became at the same time a decisive step in the formation of the State apparatus of Soviet power. If before that state bodies were perceived as provisional, from now on they received a permanent status. The All-Russia Congress of Soviets became the supreme body of authority among the higher echelons of power, and delegated all routine issues to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. The Soviet of People’s Commissars was the supreme executive body. An All-Russia Soviet of National Economy was appointed to manage the economy, endowed with regulatory functions.”

Historian Olga Pashkova wrote: 

“The first Bolshevist government – the Soviet of People’s Commissars – is surrounded by an aureole of legends, some of which contradict one another. They are so enduring that are still around, over 80 years after the October coup.

Legend number 1: “The most finely-educated government in the world”. This legend was invented by some foreigner, who found himself here in Russia during the revolution… Among the members of the Bolshevist party there were practically no specialists in any line of government work. Not a single noteworthy state official. Only four people could boast having a higher education. A majority were professional crypto-revolutionaries.

According to legend 2, this was a government of workers and peasants. In actual fact, there wasn’t a single peasant in the government. Even when the left-wing socialists-revolutionaries entered the government in November 1917 (and they were by all appearances a peasants’ party) there were still no peasants among the People’s Commissars. While in fact the peasants constituted the bulk of the country’s population!

As for the workers, there were but two of them, and occupying posts of secondary importance.

Thus, the first Bolshevist government was neither the ‘most educated’ nor a government of the ‘workers and peasants’. It was chiefly made up of professional revolutionaries. They were not struggling to save the state mechanism, but quite the opposite – were oriented at destroying it. Moreover, the Bolsheviks had no ready answer to the question: what to do afterwards.”

So then how did the Bolsheviks succeed in maintaining their hold on power?

In reply to this question Olga Pashkova says the Bolsheviks, unlike other forces active in the country, could definitely boast a more powerful political willpower. It was this will, personified in such characters as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, which enabled the Bolsheviks to not only seize, but maintain power. The Bolsheviks were people, so to say, without any complexes, something borne out by the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and then the oppositional trade unions.”

Historians of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union write about a ‘union of workers and peasants under the leadership of the workers’. Yet, facts testify to the Bolsheviks having established their party diktat in Russia. In reality, it was an occupational regime. This diktat power could only rule Russia by methods of terror. Certainly, these methods couldn’t but stir the indignation of not only the opposition, but many rank-and-file members of the Bolshevist party itself. Here is one eloquent document – a letter written by a communist, by the name of Lozovsky – to the Bolshevist faction of the Central Executive Committee. It was published in the Menshevik “Workers paper” on November 18th 1917. Protesting against the party terror, Lozovsky wrote, in part:

“I cannot keep silent, in the name of party discipline, on the issue of eradication of all dissent press, the house-to-house searches, random arrests and persecutions that arouse a profound indignation deep within the masses and create the impression that the regime of sword and bayonet is the same proletarian rule that the socialists had been preaching for many long decades. I cannot keep silent …and bear moral and political responsibility for this.”

In January 1918 for the purpose of fighting, as they put it, ‘the counter-revolutionary bourgeois press’, a revolutionary press tribunal was established. Its activity was of a punitive nature. In May the Bolsheviks instructed the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to oversee all newspapers and magazines, endowing it with the authority to shut down any publication they saw fit. For example, in April 1918 one of the oldest local newspapers “Russkiye Vedomosti” was shut down for carrying an article by socialist-revolutionary Boris Savinkov about the pro-German policy of the Bolsheviks. The so called ‘bourgeois’ press (some 340 editions) finally ceased to exist in August 1918.  The pre-revolutionary services and merits of the journalists, who helped the social-democrats, were ignored. This was written of with indignation by such celebrated writers in Russia as Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Korolenko. Lenin’s reaction to arrests of oppositional journalists was typical:

“A piteous commoner, ensnared by petty bourgeois prejudices. No, such ‘talents’ so to say, could do with a week or so in prison, if this is required for the sake of prevention.”

The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and Bolshevist terror unleashed against all manifestations of dissent rendered a Civil war in Russia inevitable. A tremendous role was played in this war by the so-called All-Russian Extraordinary Counterrevolutionary Commission under the Soviet of People’s Deputies and its head Felix Dzerzhinsky.

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Illustrations: “Russia. A Complete Encyclopaedic Guide.” Moscow, OLMA-PRESS, 2002