this is an extract from an essay i wrote last year about the soviets in the russian revolution.
Many historians including David Shub and Orlando Figes view the October revolution as a simple coup d’etat. David Shub argues this, in fact he names his chapter on the October revolution ‘Lenin Seizes Power’ while Orlando Figes calls it a ‘revolution of his (Lenin’s) own.’ However these accounts neglect the issue of the Soviets, from the middle of September there had been a tide of resolutions calling for the taking of power flooding in from local and regional Soviets. On the 11th -13th October a Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region openly called for insurrection. One worker shouted at a Bolshevik member ‘take power you sons of bitches, take power when we give it to you.’ Insurrection was decided ‘openly and publicly’ by the soviets, persuaded by the Bolsheviks but not behind the ‘workers back’ as the Mensheviks later claimed. The overthrow of the Provisional Government was not simply an attack on democracy, it was an attack on bourgeois democracy in favour of a working class democracy.
The arming of the workers was organised by the Revolutionary Military Committee (RMC). This was a body set up by the workers themselves through the soviets. The workers were themselves becoming more impatient with the Provisional Government and were becoming increasingly militant, ‘we will go into the street when we deem it advisable.’ The Bolsheviks by October had a clear majority in the soviets, especially in the major cities, for example in Petrograd the Bolshevik candidates received 443 votes while the second highest was 162 votes for the Social Revolutionaries (all of whom were left Social Revolutionaries who tended towards the Bolsheviks main principles). Although the Soviets nationwide were not monolithic and were only loosely centralised under the All Russian Central Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks were also gaining popularity among the peasants, largely due to the support they had given to the peasant revolts. Lenin at the time declared that ‘it would be sheer treachery to the peasants, to allow the peasant revolts to be suppressed when we control the soviets in both capitals.’
Despite the fact that the insurrection was decided upon ‘publicly and openly’ in the major soviets, the Mensheviks and many historians still claim that October was a ‘revolution behind the workers back.’ Orlando Figes, although seeing that the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was ‘amidst a social revolution,’ still calls it a ‘coup d’etat.’ He also sees Lenin’s real aim as ‘all power to the party,’ this is a distortion of the truth. It is true that Lenin, like the majority of communists of the time, viewed the role of the party with the majority in the soviets, as the taking of power along side the soviets. Nevertheless the aims of the communists were always workers control over the economy and proletarian power through the soviets.
Trotsky argues convincingly in volume 3 of his ‘History of The Russian Revolution’ that, the Bolsheviks could only take power as relatively easily as they did because ‘they had behind them in the workers districts… an overwhelming majority.’ This is because as Trotsky showed, ‘at the end of October the main part of the game was already in the past. The ruling class was in many ways defenceless because of the massive scale of co-operation between the workers and the soldiers which meant they did not have the means to effectively put down an insurrection. However it would have been impossible for the Bolsheviks to stage a simple coup d’etat , they also did not have the capability. The red guards and the RMC with the support of the workers and soviets were the only groups able to carry it out. The role of the Party is shown clearly through the events of the storming of the Winter Palace, the workers carried out the action whilst being persuaded and aided in organisational matters, by the Bolsheviks.
Therefore it is clear that the October revolution was not a coup d’etat carried out by a revolutionary minority but was carried out by the workers of the major cities alongside the Bolsheviks and the peasants. This is of central importance as it shows what the relationship between the soviets and the communists was. The aims of the communists and of the soviets therefore cannot be so easily separated as the question suggests.
The Soviets Under the Bolsheviks and the Civil War
Despite the massive problems which the Bolsheviks faced after the October revolution such as a ruined economy, being part of a war which they had no interest in and keeping down counter revolution, the immediate period after October was not one of a party dictatorship as some historians claim. While it is true that the Bolsheviks shut down many critical news papers there was also a massive explosion of experimentation in music, theatre, art, politics and the economy. The massive repression and terror certainly were not characteristic of this early period, on many occasions they were too lenient, for example they let numerous White Generals such as General Krasnov free on the promise that they would not fight against the Bolsheviks. Also at this point there were massive debates within the party and workers control of production and politics was also much more important than is often realised. Workers on many occasions took over factories and demanded nationalisation, while others embraced the localised factory committees. This shows that while the Bolsheviks were immediately faced with massive problems and their actions were at times repressive, the early period of Bolshevik power was also one of experimentation and debate.
During this period the Soviets did have a great deal of power and economic control. This is shown by the massive expansion of soviet principles into production with ‘workers control of management…decreed on November 27 1917’(The Soviets Oskar Anweiler pg 221). The soviets also ‘thoroughly imposed’(Oskar Anweiler The Soviets pg221) in the army and in the judicial system in which for a time all judges were elected. However the democratisation of the economy did often exasperate the already chronic economic crisis, and as Oskar Anweiler says many factory committees tended to make decisions with ‘little consideration for the national economy.’ However these problems could probably have been dealt with without loosing the fundamental principles of soviet rule and there was much debate within the Bolshevik Party and the workers movement at large about the best way to do this. The Civil war however subordinated all experimentation and other issues to the task of maintaining power against the counter revolution.
As soon as the Bolsheviks took political power they were immediately forced into opposition with the soviets (and the factory committees) on many questions such as management of the factories. This was because they could not escape the idea that the success of the revolution depended on them holding onto state power. The problem was that with all the pressures coming from the capitalist world outside, and the still capitalist economy inside, the state very quickly began to detach itself from the control of the soviets and become a force standing above them; and though some Bolsheviks began to see this danger straight away (for example the Left Communist group around Ossinsky) the party as a whole became more and more fused with the new state. This tendency was greatly accelerated by the Civil War.
The Civil War
The Civil war was a major reason for the degeneration of Soviet power and the emergence the party dictatorship. It drained the resources of the soviets because so many workers fled the cities to go and fight as did many peasants in rural areas. It also subordinated a lot of the debate and experimentation in order to further the war effort. This also further ruined the economy and the resulting famines (also caused by the ‘democracies’ embargo on the country) sapped the morale of the population.
The demands of the civil war lead to the formation of the Red Army and with it the eradication of the red guards, this took away a very important weapon of the Soviets as the red guards were the armed wing of the Soviets. The idea was, at first to use the Soviet principle in the Red Army, however this was increasingly abandoned under the pressures of winning the military victory. Trotsky in particular became almost obsessed with installing order, even if that meant dismantling a large degree of workers democracy and power. Firstly in the army, where traditional military set ups were increasingly used, so much so that they even used old Czarist officers in some cases. Trotsky later posed the possibility of doing similar things in industry, which Lenin greatly opposed. This shows how the Civil War increased the fusion with the Bolsheviks and the state, above the Soviets. The left communists in the Bolshevik party would later go on to actually consider giving up power as they realised they had become too closely entwined with the state.
While it was increasingly necessary to use capitalist methods of exploitation, as Trotsky said, ‘the workers must increase productivity’(The Soviets, Oskar Anweiler) they also faced the problem a general lack of resources. They were under a massive trade embargo, they had lost massive areas of land and resources under the German ‘peace’ agreement and were losing workers to the war effort and the wars effects. The number of workers in Petrograd was 50% of those at the end of 1916 and by the end of the civil war, the birthplace of the revolution had lost 58% of it’s population. The new capital of Moscow had also depopulated by 45%.
The End Of the Soviets
Therefore the interests of the Soviets and the Bolshevik leadership which had once been so closely converged were increasingly opposed, this reached a culmination with the bloody repression of the Kronstadt revolt. The Kronstadt revolt was organised by a soviet type organisation and demanded new elections to the Soviets. While Trotsky and other leading Bolsheviks claimed it was a ‘White conspiracy’ it exemplified the antagonism between the party-state and the workers and the Soviets. However many Bolsheviks such as Miasnikov opposed the repression and many Bolsheviks in Kronstadt itself took part in the rebellion, this shows that the party had not yet lost all working class characteristics. However the Soviets had ceased to exorcise any real power by 1921 and any resistance within the Bolsheviks was defined to internal debates within the party.
The Bolsheviks believed that by suppressing the Kronstadt rebellion they were saving the revolution from the White counter-revolution. In fact, they helped to pave the way for an internal counter-revolution which was to overwhelm them all. In the last years of his life, Lenin realised that things were not going in the direction he had hoped and that the revolution was being swamped by bureaucracy. In 1922 he wrote ‘it (the state) did not operate in the way we wanted…The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it…as if it were driven by some mysterious, lawless hand’(this ‘mysterious hand’ was the economic laws of capitalism). By 1923 Trotsky had moved into opposition against Stalin, who personified this bureaucratic power, while the left communists made even more radical criticisms of the regime and were the first to describe the Stalinist state as a form of State Capitalism.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, the Soviets were effective in achieving the immediate aims of the Bolsheviks, such as the taking of workers political and economic power. However the Soviets aims became increasingly opposed to those of the Bolsheviks as a result of the isolation of Russia. This isolation not only lead to a ‘suffocation’ of the economy by the great powers but also lead to the Civil War, which drained the Soviets resources and lead the Bolsheviks to become increasingly bound up with the state. This meant that the Party went from being a party of the dictatorship of the proletariat to a dictatorship over it. The Soviets had lost all real power by 1921 and the party itself lost all remnants of its working class nature by the time the rise of Stalinism had culminated. Rosa Luxermburgs claim that ‘the problem could only be posed in Russia… it could not be solved in Russia,’ was very important because the failure of the revolution to spread spelt the death of Soviet power. Stalinism and its ideas of ‘socialism in one country’ was the complete negation of proletarian internationalism and represented an internal counter revolution through the degeneration of the Soviets and the rise of bureaucracy. This was largely down to the degeneration of Soviet power which in turn was brought about by isolation.
Do you mind if I ask first what your political position is, if you have one in particular?
On this point:
I'd suggest that this debunks it pretty well:
http://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group
Although of course it was a factor in the development of the dictatorship, but by no means an essential one...