On the invitation of Rolando Prats, I gave an online talk about Lenin in 1917 on 30 March 2024 as part of the excellent series Leninist Days/Jornadas leninistas. I was very happy to accept this invitation because it gave me an opportunity to present a new framework for the political dynamics of the revolution. I would like to thank Rolando for organizing the session, Paul LeBlanc for his extensive introduction and critical appreciation of my work, and Ernesto Teuma, who, I am assured by those that know, did an outstanding job as simultaneous translator.

The following remarks are based on my online talk, without trying to reproduce it accurately. In particular, quoted passages are given here at greater length than would be feasible in an oral presentation. At the end of the present essay are two appendices (Glossary of Specialized Vocabulary, Demarcation Lines and the Agreement) that give a brief introduction to the specialized vocabulary of Russian political discourse in 1917: vlast, narod, census society, the agreement [soglashenie], ‘agreementizing’ [soglashatelstvo]. I hope that the present essay – and especially the extensive quotations – will give the reader something of a hands-on appreciation of these essential terms.

Introduction: Lenin’s Impatience at the Second Congress

The main business of the second and final session of the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 October 1917 was to pass two revolutionary decrees, one about the war and the other about land to the peasants. Lenin’s only public role at the congress itself was to report on these two decrees and urge their ratification. The American journalist John Reed, an eyewitness to the proceedings, gives us a vivid picture of Lenin’s urgency during the discussion of the land decree:

The representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries spoke on the Land Decree. While agreeing in principle, his faction could not vote on the question until after discussion … The Left Socialists Revolutionaries proposed a half-hour intermission. As the delegates streamed out, Lenin stood up in his place.

‘We must not lose time, comrades! News all-important to Russia must be on the press tomorrow morning. No delay!’[1]

Lenin’s fears were not misplaced: the break lasted almost two and a half hours. In the manner of a film noir, I will use this anecdote to trigger a flashback to the beginning of the revolution in February, March, and April. What political dynamics were then unleased that eventually led to Lenin’s insistent warning to the Congress delegates to get out the news about a government decree as quickly as possible?

We start by introducing a crucial figure known today only to specialists: Irakli Tsereteli, the Menshevik leader from Georgia. In March 1917, before Lenin’s return, Tsereteli articulated two basic political realities of the revolution: the unwritten constitution whereby the soviets had de facto sovereignty, and the agreement tactic whereby the Provisional Government undertook to carry out revolutionary goals in return for the legitimacy that only the Soviet could provide. Tsereteli’s eloquent argument garnered overwhelming majority support from the soviet constituency of workers, soldiers, and peasants for both these positions.

For us, what is essential is to realize that Lenin agreed with Tsereteli about the unwritten constitution but challenged him about the agreement tactic. Furthermore, Lenin had to deal with the unpleasant fact of majority support for Tsereteli’s agreement tactic – in other words, the Bolsheviks found themselves in a small minority within the soviet system. For Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders, this fact was not only unpleasant but also a shocking surprise, since the Bolsheviks had accustomed themselves to a leadership role in the prewar socialist underground. Their reaction to this surprise was the basis of the Bolshevik adjustment. Borrowing a formula from a fellow Bolshevik, the adjustment of Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders can be summed up as ‘Too soon! Too late? It’s time!’ Before unpacking this formula, let us look at how Tsereteli and Lenin stated their positions on the unwritten constitution and on the agreement tactic.

The unwritten constitution: Tsereteli and Lenin agree

When the February revolution deposed the tsar and set Russia on a revolutionary path, Tsereteli was in Siberian exile, but he quickly returned to Petrograd and assumed a leadership role. In his speeches to the Petrograd Soviet as well as to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets that met at the end of the March, he quickly cemented his position as spokesman of the pro-agreement soviet majority. Tsereteli did not invent the unwritten constitution, but he formalized it and defended it eloquently. In his speeches in March, he outlined a theory of the constitutional status of the Petrograd Soviet as representative of the soviet system as a whole (in June, this status was taken over by the national Central Executive Committee elected by the First Soviet Congress). This constitutional theory was never formally ratified by any assembly, which is why we call it ‘unwritten’. Furthermore, it was accepted by census society only grudgingly and faute de mieux, if at all. Nevertheless, this unwritten constitution was a central political reality in 1917 because it rested on a firm and unquestioned consensus within the soviet system.

Here is a brief outline of the unwritten constitution, as set out by Tsereteli in March 1917. In the first place, the Provisional Government itself was not seen as an above-class sovereign authority, or as an expression of the overarching Russian state, or even an institution responsible to the whole population. Rather, it was perceived as the political expression of census society, or, in the lingo of the time, ‘the bourgeoisie.’ The Provisional Government was therefore pictured, even by pro-agreement speakers, as the representative of the bourgeoisie, in fact, as directly answerable to it.

Where was the vlast or sovereign authority located in this system? The pro-agreement leadership did not describe the arrangement as “double vlast” (usually translated “dual power,” dvoevlastie) – indeed, they consistently and insistently asserted that this description was nothing but slander. The Provisional Government had the vlast, no one else – so the pro-agreement spokesmen said. Nevertheless, at the same time, they assured the soviet constituency that they – the revolutionary workers and soldiers – had de facto sovereignty. They were in charge (khoziain polozheniia). This assurance was backed up the following account of events, which can be viewed as the legitimizing theory of the unwritten constitution:

1. The workers and revolutionary soldiers of Petrograd carried out the revolution.
2. They, the “revolutionary classes,” brought the Provisional Government into existence due to an original agreement, negotiated via the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.
3. The Provisional Government committed itself to carrying out the will of the revolutionary narod and accepted the mandate to carry out vast democratizing reforms at home and to undertake an energetic search for democratic peace abroad.
4. The soviet system had the right, not only to outline the government’s basic program, but also to impose kontrol (supervision) of its activities and even to name ministers. It could choose not to exercise this option, but this choice is its decision. Note the following comment by Tsereteli: ‘In view of the balance of forces that now exists, I think that the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, should it consider this necessary for the interests of the whole narod, could even seize the vlast.’

Why did Tsereteli insist with such vehemence that the soviets were masters of the situation? First, he wanted to reassure his listeners that census society had no choice but to satisfy revolutionary demands. But Tsereteli also made heavy use of Spiderman’s mantra: with great power comes great responsibility. The revolutionary narod must use its immense power wisely—for instance, by exhibiting ‘wisdom’ about its ‘extreme class aspirations’ or by enthusiastically mobilizing for the war effort.

One is reminded of those cartoons that contrast ‘what you say’ to ‘what they hear’. What did the soviet constituency actually hear when Tsereteli told them so eloquently that they were masters of the situation? Was it not the following: you are going to get your demands satisfied; if the demands were not satisfied, it was the fault of the Provisional Government; in this eventuality, the workers and soldiers had the right and the ability to replace this Government. If my speculation here is on the mark, then we must conclude that in the long run Tsereteli was doing the Bolsheviks’ work for them.

The Agreement Tactic: Tsereteli and Lenin Clash

The unwritten constitution spelled out the relations between the Soviet and the Provisional Government, but the more profound issue was the In the Russia of 1917, there was still inherited from the past a profound demarcation line between the narod (the common people) as a whole and census society (educated, elite, propertied society) as a whole. This primary demarcation line gave rise to a key question: Given the gulf that separated revolutionary democracy from census society, what was the most secure basis for an effective revolutionary vlast (power, sovereign authority)? Clashing answers to this key question led to a further demarcation line within the soviet system. I call this the secondary demarcation line because it arose from the problem of how to deal with the primary demarcation line. (See Appendix II for a visual representation of the two demarcation lines.)

The Petrograd Soviet could not avoid giving an answer to this question. The answer given by Tsereteli and accepted by the soviet constituency during the first months of the revolution was as follows: there existed a voluntary soglashenie (agreement, working arrangement, treaty) between the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government, whereby the government carries out revolutionary goals in return for crucial support from the soviets. This political agreement later took the form of a coalition government, and so ‘coalition’ became a semi-synonym for the underlying agreement. Thus, the agreement was a political choice within the framework of the unwritten constitution – and, for the same reason, so was the rejection of the agreement tactic in September and October. Even after Tsereteli’s agreement tactic was rejected by the soviet constituency, Tsereteli’s unwritten constitution remained in force – in fact, it mandated a corresponding rejection of any form of coalition government. Put it this way: the unwritten constitution represents the continuity between February and October, while the status of the agreement tactic represents the discontinuity between the two revolutions.

Tsereteli and Lenin Debate Each Other

In late April 1917, there occurred something most unusual: a genuinely useful debate between two rival party leaders in 1917, a debate where each side presents the views of the other in recognizably accurate way and then presents their own contrasting views with a minimum of partisan bile. This back-and-forth took place in late April 1917 between Tsereteli and Lenin. On 27 April, there was a gathering of all available members from all four Dumas elected in tsarist Russia. Tsereteli was there as a member of the Second Duma (until, of course, he was arrested and sent to prison and Siberia). In his speech, he laid out ‘Lenin’s platform’ more accurately than most historians today:

Lenin’s platform is that, if there are such tendencies in the bourgeoisie, if the bourgeoisie is unable to rise to the national importance of the moment, it must be overthrown and the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies must take the entire vlast. We can dispute, we can disagree with Lenin – I myself do not agree with him because I am deeply convinced that the ideas of Shulgin are not the ideas of the Russian bourgeoisie. But if I believed for one moment that there are your ideas, the ideas of the entire censitarian bourgeoisie, I would say: ‘There is no salvation for Russia except in the desperate attempt to at once proclaim the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.

Lenin immediately responded with a Pravda article entitled ‘I. G. Tsereteli and the class struggle’. He raised no objection to Tsereteli’s exposition of his own views, nor did he comment on the escape clause as such. Rather, he identified what he considered Tsereteli’s essential points:

Two basic political ideas underlie I. G. Tsereteli’s speech. First, that a line can and should be drawn between two ‘sections’ of the bourgeoisie. One section ‘has come to an agreement with the democracy’; the position of this bourgeoisie is ‘secure’. The other consists of ‘irresponsible elements of the bourgeoisie who are provoking civil war’, or, as Tsereteli describes them, ‘many people from among the moderate elements of the censitarians’.

The speaker’s second political idea is this: ‘Any attempt right now to proclaim [!?] the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ would be a ‘desperate’ attempt – and he, Tsereteli, would only agree to such a desperate attempt if he believed for one minute that Shulgin’s ideas were really ‘shared by all the censitarian bourgeoisie’ [Lenin’s sarcastic interjection in brackets].

According to Tsereteli, then, a substantial section of the censitarian bourgeoisie supports the agreement, and a good thing too, because a lack of agreement would lead necessarily to a very risky attempt to erect a vlast strictly on the basis of the workers and peasants. In response to the first idea, Lenin says that Tsereteli has given his audience no concrete reason, no genuine group interest, to explain why any substantial portion of the censitarians would be motivated to sincerely support the agreement. In response to the second idea, Lenin argues that basic democratic principles legitimize a vlast based on a majority of the narod.

This polemic between the leading pro-agreement spokesman and the leading anti-agreement spokesman illustrates why the clash over the status of the agreement was the fundamental demarcation line dividing the Russian socialists in 1917. Although Lenin and Tsereteli disagree strongly about ‘the path of agreement’, we also observe an unspoken consensus concerning the unwritten constitution: if the agreement is found to be unworkable, the soviets have the right and even the duty to establish a vlast that excludes any political representation of census society.

One horrified observer, US Consul North Winship, intuited this link between political opponents. He reported back to the State Department:

Tsereteli has stood up many times in the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies with passionate speeches against Lenin and his ideas, but he seemed ready to defend Lenin’s cause against a bourgeois speaker …   Tsereteli’s final sentence in regard to Lenin amounts to a statement that if the bourgeoisie really agrees with Mr. Shulgin [reactionary member of the Fourth Duma] then he, Tsereteli, agrees with Lenin.

The back-and-forth between Tsereteli and Lenin clarifies the central issues of 1917 in a striking way. For this reason, I give below extensive excerpts from their statements.[2]

Tsereteli Defends The Agreement

Deputy Shulgin said: ‘You [the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet] say to the narod: “They are bourgeois, be suspicious of them”.’ There is an element of truth in that statement. We do say to the narod: ‘They are bourgeois – the Provisional Government is an organ answerable to the bourgeoisie’. But we add: ‘It is the organ of that part of the bourgeoisie, the representatives of that part of the bourgeoisie, which has agreed [uslovilis’], on the basis of a common democratic platform, to defend Russian freedom together with the entire democracy and has decided to go along with the democracy in that struggle’ …

I am profoundly convinced that as long as the Provisional Government continues on this path and that as long as it shapes the aims of the war in conformity with the hopes of the entire Russian narod, its position is secure – neither the men from the Petrogradskaya Storona section of town [euphemism for Bolsheviks] that Shulgin spoke about nor the irresponsible circles of the bourgeoisie who are provoking civil war will be able to shake it. (Loud applause.) …

I do not agree with Lenin or with his doctrines, but what Shulgin says is a slander against Lenin. Lenin has never advised action [during the April days] that would infringe on the progress of the revolution. Lenin is carrying on a propaganda based on his sincere view of the issues [идейная, принципиальная пропаганда] – a propaganda that is fed by the irresponsible statements made by Shulgin and by many people from among what people call the conservative censitarian elements.[3] Such statements, of course, breed despair in parts of the democracy – a despair of the possibility of reaching an agreement with the bourgeoisie. Lenin’s platform is that, if there are such tendencies in the bourgeoisie, if the bourgeoisie is unable to rise to the national importance of the moment, it must be overthrown and the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies must take the entire vlast.

We can dispute, we can disagree with Lenin – I myself do not agree with him because I am deeply convinced that the ideas of Shulgin are not the ideas of the Russian bourgeoisie. But if I believed for one moment that these are your ideas, the ideas of the entire censitarian bourgeoisie, I would say: ‘There is no salvation for Russia except in the desperate attempt to at once proclaim the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.’ These ideas [that are expressed by Shulgin] are the only real menace of civil war, and if they were to gain the upper hand in the ranks of the Provisional Government, it would be the signal for civil war … The Provisional Government should continue on the path it has started, the path of agreement.

Lenin rejects idea of any possible agreement with census society (from ‘I. G. Tsereteli and the class struggle’, Pravda 29 April)

Two basic political ideas underlie I. G. Tsereteli’s speech. First, that a line can and should be drawn between two ‘sections’ of the bourgeoisie. One section ‘has come to an agreement with the democracy’; the position of this bourgeoisie is ‘secure’. The other consists of ‘irresponsible elements of the bourgeoisie who are provoking civil war’, or, as Tsereteli also describes them, ‘many people from among what people call the conservative censitarian elements’[4] …

He has made no mention of class distinctions or any serious political distinctions between ‘the two sections’ of the bourgeoisie, nor did he think of mentioning them. By ‘the democracy’, referred to in his speech, Tsereteli meant ‘the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry’. Let us examine this class definition. The bourgeoisie has entered into an agreement with these democrats. One is entitled to ask, what forms the basis of this agreement, by what class interests is it upheld?

Not a peep about this from Tsereteli! All he speaks about is a ‘common democratic platform which has now proved acceptable to the whole country’, i.e., evidently to the proletarians and the peasants, since the ‘country’ is really the workers and peasants, minus the property-owners …

‘All the problems of the Russian revolution’, expatiates I. G. Tsereteli, ‘its very essence [!?] depend on whether the propertied classes’ (i.e., the pomeshchiki and capitalists) ‘will understand that this is a platform for the whole people [общенародная] and not a specifically proletarian platform’ [Lenin’s sarcastic interjection].

Poor pomeshchiki [gentry landowners] and capitalists! They are so slow-witted. They ‘do not understand’. They need a special minister from the democracy to teach them what’s what.

Lenin rejects idea that a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ would be a ‘desperate’ attempt

The speaker’s second political idea is this: “Any attempt right now to proclaim [!?] the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” would be a “desperate” attempt – and he, Tsereteli, would only agree to such a desperate attempt if he believed for one minute that Shulgin’s ideas were really ‘shared by all the censitarian bourgeoisie’ …

The workers and peasants constitute the vast majority of the population. And does not “democracy” mean carrying out the will of the majority? How then can one be a democrat, and yet be opposed to the “dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”? How can one fear “civil war” from it? (What kind of civil war? That of a handful of pomeshchiki and capitalists against the workers and peasants? That of an insignificant minority against an overwhelming majority?) … The workers and peasants are the vast majority. The whole vlast to this majority is, don’t you see, a ‘desperate attempt’.

Bolshevik adjustment: Too soon! Too late? It’s time!

We are finally ready to talk about the Bolshevik adjustment. As we have seen, both the unwritten constitution and the agreement tactic received majority support from the soviet constituency after the February revolution. The support given to the agreement tactic presented a severe challenge to the anti-agreement Bolsheviks. Fortunately for them, the unwritten constitution showed them a way to meet this challenge. All you had to do was to patiently explain to the soviet constituency that the agreement tactic was a non-starter – and then, when you had persuaded them, the unwritten constitution would kick in and the Provisional Government would be replaced by an anti-agreement soviet vlast. Of course, in real life things were not so simple. In the spring, the Bolsheviks had to assess the situation and make the adjustment to minority status. In the fall, they again had to assess the situation to ascertain whether their anti-agreement message had finally achieved majority status. If so, the need for the adjustment was over.

We now turn to how Lenin himself perceived and presented the adjustment at its birth and at its decease. Shortly after Lenin’s death in 1924, the long-time Bolshevik leader (and later member of the Left Opposition) Evgeny Preobrazhensky gave a brilliantly concise summary of Lenin’s outlook in 1917: Rano! Pozdno? Pora! Here is my not-quite-as-concise translation: Too soon! Too late? It’s time! ‘Too soon’ sums up the beginning of the adjustment in the spring, while ‘too late’ and ‘it’s time’ sum up different aspects of the end of the period of adjustment in the autumn.

Too Soon! Lenin and the April Theses

Looking back at Lenin’s Letters from Afar as well as other writings produced in Switzerland, we see that his entire analysis of the post-February situation had taken for granted the anti-government militancy of the proletariat under Bolshevik leadership. Only after his return did Lenin take in the glum fact that the proletariat by and large supported Tsereteli’s ‘path of agreement’, and the Petrograd garrison’s soldiers even more so.

How did Lenin react to this state of affairs? In July 1921, talking to foreign communists at the Third Congress of the Communist International, Lenin had occasion to return to this episode and to outline the political adjustment he made in spring 1917. His remarks on this occasion are extremely important, since they constitute his only extended discussion of how he saw his own April Theses:

At the beginning of the war, we Bolsheviks adhered to a single slogan – that of civil war, and a ruthless one at that. We branded as a traitor everyone who did not support the idea of civil war. But when we came back to Russia in March 1917, we changed our position entirely. When we returned to Russia and spoke to the peasants and workers, we saw that they all stood for defense of the homeland, of course in quite a different sense from the Mensheviks, and we could not call these ordinary workers and peasants scoundrels and traitors. We described this as ‘honest [dobrosovestnyi] defensism’. I intend to write a large-scale article about this and publish all the material.

On 7 April, I published my theses, in which I called for caution and patience. Our original stand at the beginning of the war was correct: it was important then to form a definite and resolute core. Our subsequent stand was correct too. It proceeded from the assumption that the masses had to be won over. At that time we already rejected the idea of the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. I wrote: It should be overthrown, for it is an oligarchic, and not a government of the narod, and it is unable to provide peace or bread. But it cannot be overthrown just now for it is able to retain the vlast due to the worker Soviets, and to date it enjoys the confidence of the workers. We are not Blanquists, we do not want to rule with a minority of the working class against the majority.

At our party conference on 22 April, the left tendency demanded the immediate overthrow of the Government. The Central Committee, on the contrary, declared against the slogan of civil war, and we instructed all agitators in the provinces to deny the outrageous lie about the Bolsheviks wanting civil war. On 22 April, I wrote that the slogan ‘Down with the Provisional Government!’ was incorrect, since, if the majority of the narod is not behind us, this slogan is either an empty phrase or adventurism.

From these highly significant comments, we can glean the core features of the Bolshevik adjustment in spring 1917. Lenin assumed (correctly) that no Bolshevik leader was opposed to the eventual overthrow of the government – that is, at a time when a majority of the soviet constituency supported this move. But various impatient tendencies within the party wanted an immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. As Lenin tells the story, his Theses were directed precisely against these ‘leftist’ tendencies who had not assimilated the glum fact of the soviet constituency’s present support of the agreement policy and the resulting Bolshevik minority status.

Lenin had a ready explanation of why ‘ordinary workers and peasants’ supported the pro-agreement socialists: they were certainly not motivated by class interest (and so beyond the pale of the Bolshevik message), but rather by a dobrosovestnyi mistake, that is, by an honest, sincere, indeed conscientious mistake. They were therefore persuadable, not only by Bolshevik agitators, but even more by the objective course of events.

Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks had to recalibrate their previous message and rely on ‘caution and patience’. ‘Civil war’– in other words, an immediate onslaught to replace the Provisional Government – had to be openly rejected. As Lenin emphasizes, this adjustment implied a renunciation only of immediate overthrow. An attempt at overthrow (and, presumably, a resumption of ‘civil war’) would become legitimate when this attempt was backed by a majority of the soviet constituency. Thus, Lenin made his adjustment, not by stepping outside his lifelong framework, but by invoking its underlying logic: the power of the message. The workers are not living up to their role as leader of the revolution? Then let’s roll up our sleeves and correct their understandable mistakes.

As Lenin accurately pointed out in 1921, the Bolshevik adjustment was already visible in the famous April Theses. Here is the relevant language from the Theses (I have eschewed ellipses for the sake of readability):

The present situation is characterized by an unreasoning trust by the masses in the government of the capitalists, the worst enemies of peace and socialism. We must recognize the fact that, in most of the Soviets of Worker Deputies [sic], our party is in a minority – as yet, a weak minority. Our task, as long as [the alternative government represented by the Soviets] succumbs to the influence of the bourgeoisie, can only be patient, systematic, persistent explanation of mistakes and tactics – an explanation conducted in a manner that is especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in the minority, we carry on the work of criticism and clarification of mistakes, preaching at the same time the need for the transfer of the whole vlast of the state to the Soviets of Worker Deputies, so that the masses shake off their mistakes by experience. This specific situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just now awakened to political life.

A few days later in April, Lenin summed up the thrust of the Theses in exactly this way:

In my Theses, I reduced the question with utter clarity to a struggle for influence within the Soviets of Worker, Batrak, Peasant, and Soldier Deputies. To leave no shadow of doubt on this score, I twice emphasized in the Theses the need for patient and persistent ‘explanations’, ‘adapted to fit the practical needs of the masses’.

Everybody (including for a long time myself) assumes that Lenin’s April Theses was aimed at speeding up the revolution – and here we have Lenin claiming that the main impact of the Theses was to slow things down. Some may be tempted to explain away his retrospective remarks in 1921 as due to a political point he wanted to make at that time. But in fact, when we return to the text of the Theses and Lenin’s other writings of spring 1917, we find that his 1921 remarks accurately portray the thrust of his April message.

When Lenin explained his Theses in the weeks following his return, he laid continual stress on patient explanation as the necessary adjustment to circumstances that he had not foreseen. ‘Patient explanation’ is a rather prim and euphemistic description of what turned out to be hoarse agitators shouting out some very impatient slogans at mass rallies. Indeed, some Bolsheviks were originally uneasy about the April Theses because ‘patient explanation’ sounded like professorial lectures on why capitalism caused war, as opposed to hard-hitting campaigns on gut issues. Nevertheless, ‘patient explanation’ is a useful term because it brings out the political thinking behind the Bolshevik adjustment. ‘Patient’, because the Bolsheviks committed themselves to refrain from overt attempts to overthrow the Provisional Government and install a vlast based on the soviets until such time as they had a solid majority in the soviet constituency. As Preobrazhensky put it, Lenin’s ‘too soon!’ ‘held back the detachments of proletarians and Kronstadt sailors who were rushing forward’.

‘Explanation’ points us toward the actual Bolshevik message beamed day-in-day-out at the soviet constituency. The message wasn’t learned explications of the difference between ‘socialist revolution’ and ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ – in fact, the Bolsheviks carefully avoided talking about immediate socialist revolution in Russia itself. The core of the Bolshevik message was aimed at the most pressing and concrete issue of the day: the effectiveness of revolutionary government. Here is the Bolshevik message of 1917, paraphrased: You workers and peasant soldiers have put your faith in an ‘agreement’ with elite society and its Provisional Government, in the expectation of painlessly achieving revolutionary goals. Well, friends, it won’t work – this agreement is doomed to failure. Neither a purely elite government nor a coalition government of socialists with censitarians is capable of sincerely working toward a democratic peace, or land to the peasants, or effective state regulation of the economy. Indeed, owing to infighting, sabotage, and profound policy differences, the Provisional Government is incapable of carrying out the essential duties of any government: external defense and internal order.

The Bolshevik Adjustment Summarized

We may now sum up the basic positions put forth by Lenin in April 1917 as follows:

1. The imperialist war is an outrage that deserves no support
2. There should be no support for the Provisional Government
3. The agreement between the Soviet and the Provisional Government is unworkable, due to clashing class interests that will lead sooner rather than later to open conflict
4. Our goal is an exclusive vlast for the proletariat and revolutionary peasantry, but not immediately: we need first to get the support of the soviet constituency
5. Events will soon demonstrate the correctness of our message, but we also need to improve our messaging.

All of these aspects of the Bolshevik adjustment can be documented by actual pronouncements from spring 1917, as given below.

The Bolshevik Adjustment documented

Imperialist War

The narody, drawn into an imperialist war against their will, [need] a clear answer about the reasons why this war is being fought. And when millions of soldiers and workers on all fronts clearly see the actual aims of the governments that dragged them into the bloody shambles, it will mean not only an end to the war, but also a decisive step against the system of violence and exploitation that causes all the wars.

 

No Support for the Provisional Government

Our attitude toward the Provisional Government at the present moment can be expressed this way: we foresee inevitable clashes, not between individuals, not between official bodies, not between groups, but between the classes of our Russian revolution. We therefore should direct all our forces toward supporting – not the Provisional Government, but – the embryo of a revolutionary vlast as embodied by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, which sits here in our person …

if revolutionary democracy wants to further develop the revolution, there is only one position it can take: absolute lack of confidence [absoliutnoe nedoverie] in the government, one that did not arise from the milieu of revolutionary democracy. [Applause] … We must say: the Provisional Government comes out of the milieu of militaristic bourgeois circles.

The point about support in the resolution proposed by Steklov [that is, the pro-agreement resolution] is utterly unacceptable. An expression of support—even a hint—is impermissible. We can’t support the government because it is imperialist—because, despite its declaration, it remains in alliance with the Anglo-French bourgeoisie.

Class Interests Make Clash Inevitable

Our attitude toward the Provisional Government at the present moment can be expressed this way: we foresee inevitable clashes, not between individuals, not between official bodies, not between groups, but between the classes of our Russian revolution. We therefore should direct all our forces toward supporting – not the Provisional Government, but – the embryo of a revolutionary vlast as embodied by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, which sits here in our person …

This needs to be said in any resolution in which we state our attitude to the Provisional Government: yes, we breathe an atmosphere of counterrevolution.

Dictatorship of Proletariat and Peasantry: Not Now, but Later

The proletariat and the peasantry and the army composed of these classes will consider the revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full … This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when the full and complete vlast is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

The proletariat and the peasantry and the army composed of these classes will consider the revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full—when all remnants of the former regime, economic as well as political, have been torn up to their very roots. This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete vlast [vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

Have we developed to the point that we can create the dictatorship of the proletariat? No. What is important is not taking the vlast—what is important is keeping it. This moment will come, but it will be advantageous for us to put it off, since right now our forces are still inadequate.

Our Message Must Be Better Presented

It is surprising that the Bolsheviks are not occupying a dominant position in the Petrograd Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies—and why do they allow into the Soviet the liquidators, who do not express the outlook of the Petrograd workers? We are the representatives of the revolutionary element in Petrograd, but in the meantime, it seems that the wide masses do not understand us. Evidently, since we are essentially correct, we are formulating our resolutions and decisions in a way that the masses do not understand.

 

The Adjustment and the Bolshevik leadership

The quotations given above accurately set forth Lenin’s position in April 1917. Nevertheless, they were all actually made by Lev Kamenev in March 1917, that is, before Lenin’s return to Russia and therefore before the April Theses. They are taken from Kamenev’s Pravda editorials, his remarks to party committees and conferences, and his speeches at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets held at the end of the month.

I held back the name of the author of these remarks in order to increase the shock to anyone familiar with historical accounts of Lenin’s April Theses. What!? Isn’t it a fact that Lenin’s April Theses rearmed the party by giving it a sharp turn to the left?  Isn’t it a fact that the Theses as a complete bombshell to Kamenev and Stalin who greeted Lenin’s new ideas with stubborn hostility? No, none of these are facts. Now is not the time to go into polemics on these issues, but I can assure listeners that I am not challenging the usual sort of academic consensus, one that rests on a wide range of detailed research. In fact, there exists almost no empirical research in English about Bolshevism during the first two months after February.  As a brief illustration of the problem, let us place side-by-side three crucial statements made by Bolshevik leaders in spring 1917 (and please note Lenin’s early comment about ‘a direct and indirect, a formal and working agreement’):

Kamenev, mid-March: There is no reason to force events. They are developing with immense speed by themselves. And precisely for this reason, it would be a political mistake to pose the question right now [seichas] of replacing the Provisional Government.

Stalin, mid-March: Many comrades who have arrived from provintsiia ask whether we shouldn’t pose the question of the seizure of the vlast right this minute [seichas zhe]. But it is not yet time right now to pose the question. The Provisional Government is not so weak.

Lenin, mid-April: Must the Provisional Government be overthrown immediately? My answer is: (1) it must be overthrown, for it is oligarchic and bourgeois, rather than reflecting the narod as a whole; it is unable to provide peace, bread, or full freedom; (2) it must not be overthrown right now (seichas), for it maintains itself by a direct and indirect, a formal and working agreement with the soviets of worker deputies, and, first of all, with the main soviet, the one in Petrograd; (3) generally, it cannot be ‘overthrown’ in the ordinary way, for it rests on the ‘support’ given to the bourgeoisie by the second government – the Soviet of Worker Deputies, and this government is the only possible revolutionary government, which directly expresses the mind and will of the majority of the workers and peasants.

These three statements all say the same thing: we must replace the Provisional Government with a vlast based on the soviets – but not ‘right now’, only later, when we have regained our position of political leadership by convincing the soviet constituency. The historians look at such statements and then inform their readers: Kamenev and Stalin were against overthrowing the Provisional Government, but Lenin was for it. I call this procedure ‘gerrymandering’: creating a false contrast by presenting some bits of the record but ignoring others.[5]

The evidence presented here about the Bolshevik adjustment of spring 1917 requires a substantial adjustment of our own. We first have to wrap our minds around the fact that Lenin saw his Theses, not as speeding up the revolutionary process, but as slowing it down. And, before recovering from that shock, we have to recognize the abundant evidence of continuity on basic positions between Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. But for now, let us eschew polemics and return to the onrush of events and ask the question: what happens when the adjustment was no longer needed, that is, when the Bolshevik message had obtained majority support among the soviet constituency?

Too late? Ending the Adjustment in Autumn 1917

We now fast forward to the time predicted by the logic of the adjustment, namely, when the mass soviet constituency rejected what the Bolsheviks had always portrayed as pro-agreement illusions. This happened faster than almost anyone expected. By early October, the Menshevik Iulii Martov ascertained the central political reality of autumn 1917: ‘the idea of an agreement [soglashenie] with the bourgeoisie has lost all credit with the masses of the narod.’

When we read through Lenin’s writings in September and October, we are not surprised to see him hammering home this central argument: the mass soviet constituency now rejects the agreement tactic and therefore, by this very fact, it supports exclusive soviet power and a vlast that is homogeneous in class terms. Of course, it was easy enough for Lenin to make such assertions, but how could he prove it? Answer: he couldn’t! Just like everyone else, he was condemned to making a judgment call based on fragmentary and contradictory data about the popular outlook.

Back in March, Kamenev and Stalin had assured impatient comrades: don’t worry, events are moving fast, the logic of the revolution is working for us, the time will soon come when we will have the necessary support. But now, in September/October, they had to ask themselves: has the time come? Stalin said ‘yes’, Kamenev said ‘well, maybe’. The dispute within the party was about trying to pierce ‘the fog of battle’ that clouded a rapidly changing situation. It was certainly not over some deep-seated matter of principle, of clashing outlooks. At least, that was Lenin’s opinion. A few months later, he had occasion to look back at autumn 1917. What he said is so revealing and gives such support to the adjustment perspective that I will cite it at length:

As matters stood in October, we had made an exact account precisely of mass forces. We not only thought, we knew with certainty, from the experience of the mass elections to the Soviets, that in September and in early October the overwhelming majority of the workers and soldiers had already come over to our side. We knew, even if only from the voting at the Democratic Conference, that support for the coalition [of moderate socialists and “bourgeois”] had also collapsed among the peasantry – and that meant that our cause had already won …

The mistake of [Kamenev and Zinoviev] was not that they ‘worried too much’ about objective conditions (and only children could think it was) but that they incorrectly evaluated the facts – they focused on details without seeing the main thing: that the soviets had come over from agreementizing to us.

From Lenin’s point of view, his party comrades had missed the forest for the trees. What were the trees? All sorts of worries about possible difficulties facing a new government, possible lack of sufficient support, possible counter-revolutionary repression. Lenin did not dismiss such concerns as irrelevant or as theoretically mistaken. Nevertheless, Kamenev and Zinoviev did not see the forest, the big picture, the central fact that defined the situation: ‘the soviets had come over from agreementizing to us.’

In the spring, the Bolsheviks had made an adjustment to the fact that ‘agreementizing’ enjoyed majority support. But now, in the autumn, agreementizing was rejected and therefore, ipso facto, a vlast exclusively based on the narod – the workers, peasants, soldiers – would find crucial support from the soviet constituency. And so it proved.

Earlier we took very seriously Lenin’s own retrospective view of the April Theses and found, on examination, much documentary evidence to support it. Lenin’s retrospective comment on the intra-party debates in September and October should also be taken very seriously. Here is just one illustrative example of the evidence that has always been there but to date has been determinedly overlooked. In their famous memo dated 10 October opposing an immediate uprising, Kamenev and Zinoviev write that the ‘slightest attack on the rights of the Soviets and the organizations created by them on the part of the vlast’ would quickly restore Bolshevik unanimity. And what happened? There was an attack on the rights of the Soviets, and not a slight one: the government moved to close down the newspaper of the leading party of the soviet system. And so, Kamenev immediately rejoined the Central Committee to help lead the uprising, and Zinoviev appeared to huge applause alongside Lenin at the Petrograd Soviet. Kamenev was entrusted with the crucial role of Chair of the Second Congress, and by all accounts did an excellent job of steering the debates and discussions toward ratification of soviet power. We can understand why Soviet historians airbrushed Kamenev and Zinoviev out of the proceedings, since they were notorious ‘enemies of the people’. It is rather discouraging that so many Western historians, both academic and activist, do the same.

When we read Lenin’s writings in September and October that so urgently insisted on a new anti-agreement government as soon as possible, we find one constant: a listing of the decrees to be immediately issued by the new vlast. Indeed, we may say that the whole point of the uprising was to give the Bolshevik program legal force. Let us then turn to the Second Congress and its decrees.

It’s Time! The Decrees of the Second Congress

In the autumn, the new anti-agreement soviet majority expressed itself through normal soviet channels, climaxing in the Second Congress in late October. According to the undisputed although unwritten rules of the soviet system, the rejection of the agreement tactic by an All-Russian Congress of Soviets meant that no government based on a coalition had any further claim to legitimacy. The Second Congress then replaced the Provisional Government with a government consisting solely of Bolsheviks. This outcome was hardly surprising, since the Bolsheviks were the only party that had always opposed the agreement and accordingly any coalition on principle.

Lenin at the Second Congress

Besides setting up an anti-agreement and therefore exclusively soviet government, the Congress used its brief two-day existence to pass two decrees that turned Russia upside down. The decree on peace jolted the peace process into motion, and the decree on land liquidated the gentry landowners as a class. Lenin’s only role at the Congress itself was to introduce and explain these two decrees. His remarks were extremely business-like and he avoided any rhetoric on the more dramatic issues that otherwise captured the attention of the Congress (the arrest of the government, the walk-outs, the all-Bolshevik cabinet). Only in the opening paragraphs of his speech on the land decree did he evoke a wider political perspective. These remarks are so revealing that I here cite them in extenso.

Lenin  on Land Decree: Opening Comments

We maintain that the revolution has proved and shown how important it is that the land question should be put clearly. The onset of the armed uprising – the second, October, Revolution – clearly proves that the land must be turned over to the peasants. A crime was committed by the government that is now overthrown and by the agreementizing parties, namely, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries: on various pretexts they kept postponing the settlement of the land question and thereby brought the country to economic breakdown [razrukha] and a peasant uprising.

Their talk about riots and anarchy in the countryside sounds false – a cowardly fraud. Where and when have riots [pogromy] and anarchy been provoked by reasonable policies? If the government had acted in a reasonable way and if their measures strived to meet the needs of the peasant poor, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses? But all the measures of the government – approved by the Soviets led by such as Avksentiev [pro-agreement SR] and Dan [pro-agreement Menshevik] – went counter to the interests of the peasants and compelled them to an uprising.

Having provoked this uprising, the government raised a hue and cry about the riots and anarchy that they themselves provoked. They wanted to crush it by means of blood and iron, but they were themselves swept away by the armed uprising of the revolutionary soldiers, sailors and workers. The government of the worker and peasant revolution must first of all decide the land issue – an issue that will pacify and satisfy the vast masses of the peasant poor. I will read to you the points of the decree that your Soviet government will issue.

Commentary

Lenin’s succinct account of events leading up to the October revolution is impressive, and even more impressive when we realize he said nothing further on the subject during the Second Congress. The sequence of events, as pictured here by Lenin: ‘under various pretexts’, the Provisional Government refused to carry out even their own ‘reasonable’ [razumnye] policies of land reform. Complicit in this crime were the pro-agreement socialists, as personified by the SR leader Nikolai Avksentiev (chair of the national executive committee of peasant soviets), and the Menshevik leader Fyodor Dan. Government inaction on this vital issue led to a peasant uprising, to which the governments only response was to threaten heavy-handed repression. This repression was prevented by the ‘worker and peasant revolution’, so the first priority of ‘your Soviet government’ must be to enact reasonable policies that will satisfy the peasants.

Lenin’s account is a paradigm of the role played by the Bolshevik adjustment and the agreement issue in his view of the revolution. The pro-agreement Soviet supported the Provisional Government in the belief or at least the claim that the Provisional Government, admittedly ‘bourgeois’, could carry out sweeping land reforms. But the ‘agreementizers’ continued their complicity even when confronted with overwhelming proof that the agreement tactic was not working. In contrast, the Bolsheviks had warned from the beginning of the revolution that the agreement tactic would only lead to disaster, but at first they were not heeded. But their ‘patient explanation’ and even more events themselves persuaded the soviet constituency of the correctness of the Bolshevik message. The agreement tactic was rejected, and the October revolution took place. So runs the narrative implied by Lenin’s remarks.

‘Land to the peasants’ had always been regarded as a central plank in the democratic revolution. And so, Lenin did not need to make any mention of socialism in order to account for and justify the October revolution. On the contrary: the mission of the October revolution as presented here was to complete the unfinished democratic revolution. In actuality, however, the whole ‘what type of revolution?’ framework was hardly relevant. Of course, Lenin believed that in many ways the October revolution was indeed a socialist revolution. Nevertheless, the label ‘socialist revolution’ was completely unnecessary either to explain or justify the October revolution. The October revolution saved Russia from the disastrous effects of a misbegotten government policy: ‘nuff said.

 

Lenin’s urgency is thus explained by his view of the land decree as a way of preventing an imminent national disaster. This brings us back to the verbal snapshot of Lenin that we presented at the beginning of our remarks, when he pleaded that any intermission in the proceedings of the Congress should be short: ‘We must not lose time, comrades! News all-important to Russia must be on the press tomorrow morning. No delay!’ The decrees were in fact the crowning point of the Bolshevik adjustment in three ways: as the climax of the ‘patient explanation’ at the heart of the adjustment, as a break with the paralysis that afflicted the Provisional Government in the autumn months, and as the first crucial blow in the upcoming civil war.

The two decrees were highly dramatic gestures –and that is precisely why Lenin was determined to have them announced at the Congress itself. They were the final blow in the whole tactic of ‘patient explanation’. According to the Bolshevik message throughout the year, the agreement tactic prevented genuine movement toward essential goals of the revolution. What better way to drive home this message than to initiate dramatic policies at the very moment that the agreement tactic was no more? The decrees were thus a brilliantly innovative bit of theatrical agitation.

The power of the Bolshevik message was further amplified by the painfully obvious bankruptcy of the agreement tactic in September and October. The agreement that had earlier defined the political landscape was no longer possible if neither side – neither the censitarian liberals nor the soviet constituency – had any interest in it. Meanwhile, the country was falling apart at an accelerated pace. The Bolsheviks and other anti-agreement forces had a ready answer to the crisis: a vlast based on the soviets could get things done because it was based on homogeneous class forces. Maybe this was a good answer, maybe a bad one, but the pro-agreement ‘moderates’ simply didn’t have any answer that anyone took seriously – perhaps not even themselves. This fact accounts for the doom and gloom, the hopeless and helpless tone, that arose like a miasmic cloud from so much of the interminable rhetoric of autumn 1917.

Many in the soviet constituency saw the decrees of the Second Congress as the triumph of action over talk. Claude Anet, a French journalist in Russia throughout 1917, was fiercely opposed to the Bolsheviks who threatened to subvert support for the French army facing Germany. His immediate reaction to the new Bolshevik government – written and published at the time – is therefore unexpected but highly revealing:

For a long time, we heard nothing but complaints, wailing, and lamentations from our socialist masters [pro-agreement Mensheviks and SRs]. For six months, they sang an eternal De profundis [funeral chant] for the revolution, in which we heard again and again the same words in various combinations: ‘ruin of the country’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘stab in the back of the revolution’.

But in this case [the Second Congress], the conquerors sounded forth a song of victory [Anet mentions specifically Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev]. And it suited them. Among all these interminable talkers, they acted. They put together the overthrow, they struck while the iron was hot, and they ceded the parliamentary tribune of the Pre-Parliament and other assemblies to the tireless chatterers from the socialist parties. They made their propaganda in the barracks and the workshops. Today, they grasp the tangible benefits. Bravo! Well done![6]

Looking forward, the decrees passed by the Second Congress were not just another set of resolutions passed by one or another of the multitude of rallies and conferences – rather, they were state acts that irrevocably changed the whole political landscape. The meaning of ‘counter-revolution’ abruptly changed: it no longer meant ‘restoring the autocracy’, but rather ‘undoing peace diplomacy as well as the new order in the countryside’. Good luck with that! One could argue that the course of the civil war was determined during the few hours that the Second Congress was in session. The Bolshevik adjustment had fulfilled its mission, and, as the sworn enemy of the Bolsheviks was constrained to admit, ‘Bravo! Well done!’

Coda

I have presented a framework for understanding the political dynamics of 1917 using some relatively unfamiliar concepts: demarcation lines, unwritten constitution, centrality of the clash over the agreement, Bolshevik adjustment (‘patient explanation’). Yet, all in all, this way of looking at the 1917 revolution is boringly straightforward. From the very beginning of the revolution, the Bolsheviks broadcast their message to the soviet constituency: the revolutionary goals accepted by just about everybody could not be achieved by means of agreements, coalitions, or anything else that tried to paper over deep-rooted class conflict. The Bolsheviks also announced their intention to install an exclusively soviet government as soon as they could rely on majority support from the mass soviet constituency – no sooner, but no later. The soviet constituency looked at the record of the Provisional Government and felt the effects of the accelerating national crisis, and they concluded that the agreement tactic had failed disastrously. The Bolsheviks got their majority, they installed the promised soviet government, and they immediately acted on their well-known recipes for ending the war and giving land to the peasants.

Our flashback to the beginning of the revolution has now run its course and we have arrived again at our opening scene of Lenin haranguing the Second Congress to cut short its intermission. This scene illustrates the centrality of the agreement issue, as set forth in Lenin’s introductory rationale for the land decree. It also illustrates the Bolshevik adjustment, serving as one last spectacular bout of patient explanation. And it illustrates the unwritten constitution that conferred legitimacy as well as the power to issue binding decrees to the worker-peasant vlast created by the All-Russian Soviet Congress. And so, we leave the Bolsheviks in their time of triumph, before the travails that lay in wait.

Appendices

Appendix I: Glossary of Specialized Vocabulary

Appendix I is a brief introduction to some basic terms used in Russian political discourse during 1917.

Appendix II: Demarcation Lines and the Agreement

Appendix II is a chart with commentary that sets out the social and political context of the agreement at the center of Russian politics in 1917. The illustration at the top of this chart reads ‘On the Issue of an Agreement’. It is taken from an illustration in John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World of a poster found on the walls of Petrograd shortly after the Second Congress. The poster set forth the results of a mass meeting that debated the possibility of an ‘agreement’ between socialist parties (by this time, any agreement between narod and census society was long dead).

 

Appendix I: Glossary of Specialized Vocabulary

Vlast

Power (as in All Power to the Soviets!), Regime, Government, Authority, etc.

Narod

The popular classes, including workers, peasants, soldiers, ‘petty bourgeoisie’; as opposed to

Census Society

The propertied classes, educated society, the elite, ‘bourgeoisie’

Agreement (Soglashenie)

The proposed political pact between the narod and census society

Agreementizing (Soglashatelstvo) and Agreementizers

Insulting labels used by anti-agreement socialists to describe pro-agreement socialists

 

Two Political Demarcation Lines in 1917

Narod, ‘revolutionary democracy,’ soviets		Census society, ‘bourgeoisie,’ Provisional Government
Anti-agreement: ‘Internationalists,’ Bolsheviks, Left SRs, et al.	Pro- agreement: ‘Defensists,’ Mensheviks, SRs, Popular Socialists

“

 

 

 

 

Primary Demarcation line

 

Secondary Demarcation line                                       

 

The primary demarcation line (thick in the chart) divides Russian society as a whole: the line between the narod (the common people) versus ‘census society’ (educated, elite, propertied) society. The secondary demarcation line (narrow in the chart) divides the parties in the soviet system itself over the question of how to deal with the primary demarcation line.

Key question: Given the primary demarcation line that separates revolutionary democracy and census society, what is the most secure basis for an effective revolutionary vlast (power, sovereign authority)?

The answer adopted at the beginning of the revolution: The vlast was created on the basis of a voluntary soglashenie (agreement, working arrangement, treaty) between the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government, whereby the government carries out revolutionary goals in return for crucial support from the soviets. This political agreement later took the form of a coalition government, and so ‘coalition’ became a semi-synonym for the underlying agreement.

Clashing attitudes toward this agreement gave rise to the secondary demarcation line within revolutionary democracy. The central arguments of the two opposed camps (keeping in mind that the word ‘homogeneous’ explicitly appears in this debate for the first time in early August) are as follows:

Pro-agreement (Mensheviks, SRs, Popular Socialists): a vlast based on the agreement can and must work, because a homogeneous vlast – that is, one recruited exclusively from only one side of the primary demarcation line – will be unable to cope and will inevitably collapse.

Anti-agreement (Bolsheviks, left SR faction, Menshevik-Internationalist faction): Any coalition government based on the agreement will inevitably fail, because of the chasm separating the outlook and the interests of the narod from those of census society. Instead of a fatally heterogeneous coalition-type vlast, we need one recruited exclusively from the popular side of the primary demarcation line. Such a homogeneous government will face no internal obstacle to carrying out the revolutionary goals of peace and land.

In March, the anti-agreement forces were a small minority, although they made a spirited showing at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets at the end of the month, under Kamenev’s leadership. All Bolshevik leaders (very much including Lenin) were surprised and shocked by this unexpected minority status, and in response, they make the Bolshevik adjustment: no attempt to replace the Provisional Government with soviet power until the anti-agreement message commands a working majority from the soviet constituency.

Throughout the year, we may picture the secondary demarcation line as moving steadily to the right, that is, more and more of the soviet constituency agrees with the anti-agreement definition of the situation. This process accelerates after the kornilovshchina (the abortive military coup at the end of August). The working majority for the anti-agreement message demanded by the Bolshevik adjustment now seems at hand, although the exact nature of the called-for response is a difficult judgment call, leading to disputes among Bolshevik leaders.

After the Second Congress of Soviets in late October, the secondary demarcation line turns into revolutionary barricades that separate those who are ready to take up arms to defend soviet power and those who are ready to take up arms to overthrow it. The serious efforts to widen the base of soviet power that were undertaken immediately after the Second Congress did not rest on the hope of compromise between socialists on opposite sides of the secondary demarcation line, but rather on the hope of the conversion of at least some pro-agreement socialists over to an anti-agreement position, one that accepted ‘the conquests of October’.

Notes

[1] John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), pp. 181-2, original publication 1919 (Reed is the only source for this anecdote).

[2] Tsereteli, Vospominaniia o fevralskoi revoliutsii (Paris: Mouton, 1963), pp. 112-21; Lenin, PSS 31:468-72/

[3] Умеренные. Although this word means ‘moderate’, its connotation as used in Russian political discourse in 1917 seems better translated by ‘conservative’ than by ‘moderate’. In this case, the people to whom Tsereteli refers are precisely not those whom we would call the ‘moderate’ elements, that is, who might be ready to give the agreement with the Soviet a chance.

[4] Умеренные. See previous footnote.

[5] Two other major issues where gerrymandering of this kind has created a factitious split among Bolshevik leaders are the war and party unification.

[6] Claude Anet, La révolution russe (Paris: Payot, 1918), pp. 230-31.

 

Featured image: The second All-Russian Congress of Soviets at the Smolny. Petrograd, 7-9 November, 1917. Public Domain.

Lars T. Lih