Lenin, Bolshevism, Menshevism.

The Revolution of 1917

André Mommen
University of Amsterdam
Aix-Marseille University

Paper

11th International Conference on Russian Studies in History in Budapest

The Centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution(s): its Significance in World History
May 15-16, 2017.

1
“Yes the victory of the revolution was irrevocable! I remembered the soldiers tearing down
the portrait of Nicholas that morning. Nicholas was still free and calling himself Tsar. But
where was Tsarism?”

N. N. Sukhanov

Introduction

One of the main features of the Russian Revolution of February 1917 was the speed and
comprehensive nature of its outburst. After a few days of popular protests, the Romanov
dynasty was replaced by a Provisional Government. Impressive was the implosion of Tsarist
power structures in the whole country. Tsarist authorities were deposed in the provinces
where power was taken over by committees of citizens, workers and soldiers. During the
revolutionary events militants of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Social Democrats and the
Constitutional Democrats parties reappeared and demanded democratic and social reforms.
These parties presented themselves as the leading revolutionary forces of workers, peasants
and liberal bourgeoisie contesting the hegemony of the estate owners.

The second revolution in October 1917, with the Bolshevik seizure of power inspired
bourgeois historians to develop the thesis that the October Revolution had been a (military)
coup executed by a tiny minority of armed workers and soldiers. Lenin’s revolutionary take-
over was also depicted as a foolish Blanquist coup d’état the Social Democrats in the western
world condemned. Hence, the common notion could spread that the Bolsheviks came to
power after having duped a politically unsophisticated populace through a Machiavellian
conspiracy. Reality is more complex. The urban masses played in both revolutions a major
role. But the Bolsheviks were many times bypassed by the workers of the large firms and the
poor peasants parcelling out the estates of the big landowners.

The Russian Revolution

The 1917 February Revolution began in Petrograd in a cascade of mass strikes. 1 Early in the
morning of 23 February, International Women’s Day, women from several textile factories in
the Vyborg district, left their looms for a street demonstration. Soon, they also mobilised the
metal workers of the factories in the neighbourhood. By noon, about 50,000 workers had
already joined the mass manifestation which spread rapidly in other districts of the city. By
Saturday 25 February the city was entirely lamed by a general strike. On 28 February the tsar,
who could no longer contain the revolt, resigned. A provisional government was formed by a
liberal zemstvo member, Prince G. E. Lvov. 2

Main-stream historiography has highlighted the February/March 1917 events in Petrograd, but
neglected to analyse the events in the provinces and how the revolutionaries could conquer

1 N. N. Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917. A Personal Record, [Zapiski O Revolutsii], edited,
abridged and translated by Joel Carmichael, London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1955: pp. 3-99.
2 Diane P. Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917, Princeton New

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 96-128.

2
the masses. This happened by putting forth proposals, if not solutions, for the social and
economic problems of the workers. Hungry people were receptive to this agitation. Because
their lives had been ripped apart by a seemingly endless and meaningless war, workers
responded favourably to anybody promising a way out of their misery. Sometimes, historians
argued that the revolutionary events in Petrograd were copied by the urban masses in the
provincial towns. But the revolutionary events in the provincial towns had their specific
origins and causes and were not necessarily a copy of the events in Petrograd. Due to the
railway and telegraph networks, messages about the political events in the capital could reach
in no time the most remote parts of the Russian Empire. Local revolutionaries took over
power in the provincial cities, usually with the help of a rebellious local garrison. These local
revolutionaries were not necessary radicalised Socialists, but in many cases liberals
representing the middle classes. They established administrative structures in order to
guarantee “order” in the city. The Provisional Government recognized this situation and
replaced the Tsarist Governors by Commissars. In the villages the revolutionary events
followed another class divide. Here the poor and landless peasants started spontaneously
parcelling out the large estates abandoned by their owners. These peasants became the social
backbone of the Socialist-Revolutionary Part (SR).

Political historians also paid much attention to the origins of Bolshevism and to the
personality of Lenin who was the architect of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. But
what was Lenin’s real role in the October Revolution? Of course, Lenin was the person who
decided to go ahead, but Trotsky attested later that Lenin had been astonished when the
Bolsheviks could take over power without heavy fights.3 How could a small group of
revolutionaries conquer power in the largest state of Europe?

Two major hypotheses about the origins and success of Bolshevism were formulated.
The first hypothesis refers to the backwardness of the country’s economy due to resistance of
the big landowners and the Tsarist bureaucracy to capitalist development. The middle class
was too weak to carry out the necessary economic and political reforms, while the Russian
industrialists and merchants were still trusting on the Tsarist bureaucracy for subsidies and
protection. Meanwhile, the landowners were mainly interested in preserving the traditional
agricultural structures with its medieval communal system. This ruled out the possibility of
development along the lines of Western democracy. Some authors, like Nikolay S. Timasheff,
have argued that Russia could have opted for the British or German (Prussian) road to a
modern capitalist society. 4 But in this period Russia’s economic and political development
was already largely determined by the inflow of foreign capital financing heavy industry,
railways and most armament industries. This made structural reforms in agriculture less
urgent.

With the growth of manufacturing, however, an industrial proletariat arose, drawn from the
peasantry, and badly exploited by local and foreign capitalists. Food produced by the villages
should have provisioned the workers in the cities. This did not sufficiently happen. The
village population had also increased, while the size of individual holdings had contracted and
productivity had decreased. Hence, the villages were barely able to feed themselves. 5 Finally,
the low living standard of the population in the cities hindered the development of a wide
domestic market for Russian manufactured goods, which created an alarming economic

3 Trotsky, My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1930, p. 337.
4 Barrington Moore, Jr, Soviet Politics. The Dilemma of Power. The Role of Ideas in Social Change, New
York: Harper Torch Books, 1965 (1950), p. 20.
5 About 100 million peasants were struggling for a satisfactory existence.

3
stagnation. In addition, high prices artificially maintained by monopolies and high tariffs,
forbade any perspective on economic growth. The February Revolution was thus chiefly the
result of a difficulty to solve basic social and political contradictions.

The second hypothesis is defended by Marxists, who also stress the backwardness of the
Tsarist regime that rested upon a quasi-feudal landed nobility. The entrepreneurial class was
politically too weak to contest Tsarist power because many industrialists were depending on
governmental protection and subsidies. Even the larger Russian industries had the Tsarist
government as their principal customer. Imperialism played its role in this process. Many
Russian enterprises were, in addition, directly or indirectly owned by foreign capital. By
1900, Russia was depending on the inflow of British, German, French and Belgian capital and
foreign loans, which also guaranteed the survival of Tsarism. 6 Meanwhile, the Russian
economy had already been fully integrated into the capitalist world economy and become a
major exporter of raw materials, timber and cereals.

An alliance of industrialists and workers for a democratic society was improbable. The
Russian bourgeoisie needed the repressive Tsarist states against the rebellious unskilled
workers concentrated in her large factories. On the other hand, this mass could be used by the
Social Democrats to extort political, social and economic reforms from Tsarism and
industrialists. For Lenin, it was a matter of going ahead of the spontaneously revolting and
striking industrial workers in their struggle for better working conditions and higher wages. 7
But Tsarism violently repressed the nascent labour movement. Unions were not tolerated.
Workers were arrested in case of strikes. As a result of these conflicts Socialist intellectuals
could find a common ground with these workers fo fight the Tsar and the capitalists.

Lenin and Martov

By then, a transformation of Marxism from a speculative theory of the intelligentsia into a

doctrine of the revolutionary working-class movement occurred. Lenin, whose political career
was in the beginning intimately linked to Peter Struve’s,8 saw in Marxism not necessarily a
sociology, but a revolutionary theory for the working class. The development of capitalism in
Russia had made the working class, and not the peasantry, the only revolutionary force able to
cope with Tsarism and capitalism. The creation of a nation-wide and effective socialist
vanguard party was Lenin’s answer to the penetration of capitalism in Russia. But as long as
the repressive situation in Russia persisted, Lenin’s Russian Social Democratic Workers
Party, founded in 1898, remained a small and secret society separated from the proletariat,
necessarily operating from outside Russia. According to Lenin, the task of overthrowing
Tsarism and bourgeois rule could no longer be left to people only sympathizing with Social
Democracy. Lenin, who believed in a highly centralized vanguard party of professional
6 John P. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1883-1913,
Chicago: Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970.
7 Richard Pipes developed the theory that there was already a labour class movement which antedated

Social Democracy and developed quite independently from it. Lenin’s (but also Martov’s and Dan’s)
first contacts with the labour movement must have occurred in St. Petersburg in the years 193-95. The
first labour movement developed here as a typically reformist trade-union movement grouping skilled
and also unskilled workers. Richard Pipes, Social democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement
1885-97, Irvine, California: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1985 (second edition).
8 Richard Pipes, Struve. Liberal on the Left, 1870-1905, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press, 1970.

4
revolutionaries, devoting their whole life to the revolutionary cause. This opinion was
opposed by Martov and his faction of Mensheviks.

In Martov’s opinion, it was of crucial importance to be connected as socialist party to the real
workers’ movement, i.e. the trade unions and the socialist debating clubs. Hence, he defined a
party member as anyone who acknowledged the party programme and gave the party regular
assistance under the guidance of one of its organizations. For Lenin, a party member was a
person who acknowledged the party programme and supported the Party in one of the party
organizations. Lenin also argued that the revolutionary party had to be a vanguard of class
struggle, selecting its members and appointing them on responsible functions. Hence,
proletarian political power should have to be concentrated in the hands of a small number of
revolutionary leaders. The difference between the two definitions seems “rather thin”, Lars T.
Lih concluded.9

“Thin”? Most historians of the Russian Revolution later argue that in 1903 the breach
between Bolshevism and Menshevism was already deep, because the debates knew violent
phases with personal recriminations. Marcel Liebman concluded that “for all, the differences
between the two factions were real enough; they reflected two fundamentally opposed
conceptions of the nature of political and revolutionary action.” 10 Liebman nonetheless
conceded that Lenin’s short treatise What is to be done? in 1902 had been enthusiastically
received by most Mensheviks. Their acclaim was, however, “purely superficial, and in any
case full of reservations.”11 In his Le léninisme sous Lénine, Liebman stressed the fact that
this idea of a revolutionary party was at the very origins of Lenin’s break with Martov 12 But
how to explain that at the Second Congress of 1903, Martov’s proposals were accepted with
28 votes against 22 and 1 abstention. 13

Although the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had held its first party
congress in 1898, unity was only virtual and mainly based on Marxist credentials.
Until the Second Party Congress (Brussels) in 1903, the Party only existed in the form
of a scattered discussion group, tied together by a common Marxist belief. Most
energy was devoted to attempts to convince each other of the correctness of a
particular shading of Marxist theory, than to plan for overthrowing the Tsarist regime.
Notwithstanding all these differences and difficulties, Lenin’s policy was to unite all
factions under his direction. Lenin argued that it was a matter of fact that no
revolutionary organization had ever practised broad party democracy which would
simply facilitate the work of police functionaries. 14

Although Lenin was a doctrinaire, he never would omit practical necessities or forget
concrete situations. Hence, Lenin also favoured decentralization, but only insofar as
it implied that the Party should have the right to bring various questions to the

9 Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered. What Is to Be Done? in Context, Delhi: AAKAR, Books 2013 (2006), p.
518.
10 Marcel Liebman, The Russian Revolution, New York: Random House, 1970 (1967), p. 63.
11 Ibid.
12 Marcel Liebman, Le léninisme sous Lénine, Paris: Le Seuil, 1973, Vol. 1, La conquête du pouvoir, pp.

27-34.
13 The conflict between Lenin and Martov on the question of party organization was also the result of past

conflicts and debates in a clandestine party operating from outside Russia.

14 At the Second Party Congress in 1903, the assembled participants could reach an agreement on

some issues, but not on all.

5
attention of the higher echelons of the Party. This provision was, however, not
included in the Party statutes for fear of facilitating police infiltration. It was only in
the aftermath of “Bloody Sunday” leading to the Revolution of 1905 that major
dissimilarities between the two factions concerning the role of the revolutionary party
would appear. In an article published in Iskra, Martov argued that the Party had to
intensify propaganda among the masses and that the conspirational organization
should be adapted to the tasks of the technical leadership of the uprising. He
concluded: “Hence, our task at the given moment is not so much the ‘organization ’of
the people’s revolution, as its ‘unloosing’.15 Lenin’s reaction to Martov’s article was
concise and clear: “The separation of the ‘technical’ side of the revolution from the
political side of the revolution is the greatest twaddle.”16

Lenin, however, knew that without mass support his project of waging a successful uprising
would necessarily fail. Looking for working-class support by opening the Party to the
proletarian masses was thus a question of practical urgency. But, on the other hand, Lenin still
distrusted the spontaneous development of an independent trade-union movement. Trade-
unionism meant for him the ideological enslavement of the workers to the bourgeoisie. Hence,
the task of Social Democracy was to combat spontaneity and to divert the labour movement
from its spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to go under the wing of the bourgeoisie. It was
thus a matter of bringing the unions under the leadership of Social Democracy.

The situation rapidly changed with the outbreak of the Revolution of 1905. Well-organised
political parties could now openly define their own political goals, primarily the creation of a
parliamentary regime. These political parties promoted themselves as “modernizers” pressing
for thoroughgoing political reforms. Their political ideas rapidly reached the provincial towns
and even the villages. The liberals of the Kadet Party played a major role in this process. They
pleaded for a parliamentary system based on responsible government and the Rule of Law.
The Socialist Revolutionaries (or Narodniks) and the Social Democrats of Lenin and Martov
were more interested in a social revolution liberating the peasantry and the workers from
feudalism and capitalism.

During the short period of temporary freedom after the Revolution of 1905, Lenin offered a
resolution to the Third Party Congress in April 1905, in which he was strongly urging that the
elective principle receive greater application within the Party. However, he also asserted that
it could be applied much more widely than it was under the conditions then existing.
Although the resolution was not carried at the Third Congress, a closely similar one was
adopted as the official Party position at the Party Conference in Tammerfors in December
1905.17

The Tsar had meanwhile legalized many formally illegal working-class institutions, trade
unions above all. Hence, the conspirational party was no longer the only way the working
class could organise its struggle. This inspired Mensheviks and Bolsheviks to forget their
differences when preparing the Party Congress of April 1906. Lenin’s hope was nonetheless

15 Quoted in Theodore Dan, The Origins of Bolshevism, London: Secker & Warburg, 1964, pp. 303-305.
16 Lenin’s article was published in Vperyod, nr. 7, 25 February 1905. Lenin Collected Works, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1962, Moscow, Vol. 8, pp. 167-176.
17 At Tammerfors (December 12-17) 1905, the Conference discussed the development of the peasant

movement. The Party supported the revolutionary measures of the peasantry, including the
confiscation of all state, church, monastery, crown and privately-owned land.

6
destroyed by the Mensheviks who wanted to participate in the elections for the first State
Duma.18 The question would divide Bolsheviks and Mensheviks fundamentally. In fact, the
Mensheviks looked to the liberal bourgeoisie organised in the Kadet party in order to install a
constitutional republic. The Mensheviks also hoped that the Russian labour movement would
fully Europeanise itself, becoming legal and open just like the German model of the SPD.19
The Mensheviks saw in the State Duma the first step to a constitutional state laying the
ground for a modern workers’ party European style, which Karl Kautsky had already defined
in his book The Class Struggle from 1892. Hence, the Mensheviks advocated participation in
elections to the Duma the Tsar had announced in his October Manifesto of 1905.20

Lenin fiercely opposed this tactic as harmful.

Lenin: “The Mensheviks argue that Social Democrats in all countries take part in
parliaments, even in bad parliaments. This argument is false. We, too, will take full
part in a parliament. But the Mensheviks themselves realise that the Duma is not a
parliament; they themselves refuse to go into it. They say that the masses of the
workers are weary and wish to rest by participating in legal elections. But the Party
cannot and must not base its tactics on the temporary weariness of certain centres.
This would be fatal for the Party; for weary workers would choose non-party
delegates, who would merely discredit the Party. We must perseveringly and patiently
pursue our work, husbanding the strength of the proletariat, but not ceasing to
believe that this depression is only temporary, that the workers will rise still more
powerfully and more boldly than they did in Moscow, and that they will sweep away
the tsar’s Duma. Let the unenlightened and ignorant go into the Duma—the Party will

18 The Law of December 11 (24), 1905—a law on the elections to the Duma, promulgated by the tsarist
government as a certain con cession to the workers at the height of the Moscow armed uprising.
Unlike the regulations governing the “consultative” Bulygin Duma (August 6, 1905), the new law
envisaged the establishment of a “legislative” Duma. It added to the curias established earlier—
agricultural (landlords), urban (bourgeoisie) and peasant—a workers’ curia, and somewhat extended
the composition of the urban electorate, without increasing, however, the total number of electors
from the urban curia. The suffrage was not universal, for upwards of two million working men,
landless peasants, nomads, service men and young people under 25, as well as all women, were
disfranchised. Nor was the suffrage equal. The class character of the electoral system found
expression in the fact that there was one elector for 2,000 voters from the agricultural curia, 7,000
from the urban, 30,000 from the peasant and 90,000 from the workers’ curia, that is, one landlord vote
was equated with three votes cast by the urban bourgeoisie, 15 peasant votes and 45 workers’ votes.
The electors from the workers’ curia made up a mere four per cent of the total number. In the case of
the workers’ curia, only workers in undertakings employing not less than 50 workers were allowed to
vote. Undertakings employing from 50 to 1,000 workers sent one delegate. Major undertakings sent
one delegate for every 1,000 people. The suffrage was not direct. The electoral system established for
the workers was three-stage, and for the peasants four-stage. The ballot was practically not secret.
The law ensured an overwhelming predominance of landlords and capitalists in the Duma. Lenin
pointed out that the law virtually added nothing new to the procedure of election to the Duma.
19 The SPD was also financing the Russian Social-Democratic organizations and pushing for their

unification. The Spd was also in charge of the Russian party funds via a Treuhand presided over by
Clara Zetkin, Karl Kautsky and Franz Mehring. Quarrels between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks arose
concerning the ownership of moneys originating from the Schmitt heritage. Nikolai Schmitt, a wealthy
Bolshevik, had legated his fortune to the Party. André Mommen, “Émile Vandervelde als arbiter tussen
Lenin en Martov’, in Emmanuel Wagemans, (ed.), Rusland-België 1900-200. Honderd jaar liefde-haat,
Uitgeverij BENERUS, Antwerp, 2000, pp.75-100.
20 John Marot, “The real Vladimir Lenin”, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/the-real-

vladimir-lenin/

7
not bind its fate with theirs. The Party will say to them: your own practical experience
will confirm our political forecasts. Your own experience will reveal to you the utter
fraud the Duma is; and you will then turn back to the Party, having realised the
correctness of its counsel.”21

Finally, Lenin, who wanted to boycott the first Duma, suddenly changed his mind. He
called for participation, aligning himself on this point with the Mensheviks. But he did
not share the Mensheviks’ optimistic view of the political significance of such a
participation.22 The fact was also that the Trudoviki could elect working-class
candidates and that in the Caucasus several Social Democrats would stand for a
seat. This must have incited Lenin to change his mind. Hence, the Unification
Congress of April 1906 decided to participate and to “exploit methodically the
conflicts arising between the government and the Duma.”23 The First Duma, having
become a political reality, convened in the Tauride Palace on 27 April 1906. But Lenin
had also changed his mind because a new agrarian policy had been announced by the
government.24 That governmental plan was designed to create a class of wealthy kulaki at the
costs of the poor peasants. But in July 1906, the Tsar already dissolved the First Duma
and fixed 20 February 1907 as the date for the convocation of a newly elected
Second Duma.

The Stolypin reforms

The Land Statute which regulated the emancipation of 1861, had recognized the right of the
peasantry to an area of land representing the normal holding of a peasant. The peasants did
not get that land gratis. It was to be redeemed by a voluntary agreement with the landowners
according to the law. Moreover, 325,000 ex-serfs had received no land at all. Although the
area of allotment land (owned by the commune) had risen from 116,720, 996 desiatins in
1877 to 138,767, 587 desiatins in 1905, but this did not suffice to offset the population
increase in the villages. In European Russia, 30 percent of the peasants held allotments which
were too small to feed them. Hence, the redemption payments became a burden far too heavy
for the average peasant to bear. Already in 1881, the government was forced to reduce
payments and to remove the collective liability of the commune for these payments in 1903.
The rapid growth of the population, however, was not accompanied by agricultural progress
and growing productivity. The community system was a bar to progress. It kept the yield per
desiatin comparatively low. The acceleration of industrial development resulted in the
creation of large factories boosting the demand for agricultural products. With the extension
of the railway system began the commercialization of farming of which the big landowners
were the main beneficiaries.

21 V. I. Lenin, Should we boycott the State Duma? The platform of the Majority, Lenin Collected Works,
Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Vol. 10, pp. 97-100.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/jan/00.htm
22 Lars T. Lih, o.c.
23 Ralph Carter Elwood (ed.), The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party 1898-October 1917, Volume 1,

Robert H. McNeal (General Editor), Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, p. 101.
24 Tamás Krausz, Reconstructing Lenin. An Intellectual Biography, New York: Monthly Review Press,

2015, pp. 103-109.

8
In 1882, Minister of Finance Nikolai K. Bunge founded the Peasant Land Bank to assist and
control the peasantry in buying land offered for sale. 25 Under Bunge’s successor, the financial
system was changed and operations were restricted. In 1882-92, about 37 percent of all
private lands bought by the peasantry had passed through the Land Bank. In 1895, Minister of
Finance Count Sergey Witte brought about changes by allowing the Land Bank to engage in
land operations. The Bank’s credit was now enlarged with the aim to create a well-to—do
middle-class peasantry. The Land Bank financed about 75 percent of all the land purchased by
the peasantry. The Trans-Siberian Railway was also financing the colonization movement
towards Siberia. The law of 6 June 1904 replaced the old law of 1889 and made of emigration
to Siberia its corner stone. Though about 1,560,905 persons resettled in the period 1896-1907,
peasant misery did not decline. Hence, the colonization movement only offered fertile soil to
social discontent. The situation of the Russian peasantry was alarming. In 1905, the peasantry
of European Russia, forming 84.1 percent of the population, held only 35.1 percent of the
land. It was clear that the peasantry would turn, some day, to violence against the big
landowners.

Well aware of this problem and with the violent events of 1905 still in mind, Prime Minister
Pyotr Stolypin (1906-1911)was now looking for a structural solution. Just like Count Witte,
he was thinking of creating a strong, independent, peasantry (“ставка на силных”) serving
as a bulwark against rioting poor peasants and rebellious workers. Stolypin’s purpose was to
speed up the process of enclosure and the creation of larger and compact holdings. On 9
November 1906, he promulgated his famous land law aiding the poor peasantry purchasing
allotments or making improvements. Lands withdrawn from the commune could be claimed
in a single plot.26

Stolypin’s reforms were, however, totally insufficient to satisfy the demands of the peasantry.
Meanwhile, the landowners concocted against him in order to preserve the existing order.
Through necessity and conviction, he could not violate the property rights of the landlords.
Hence, the opposition parties – Kadets, Narodniks, and Socialists –, seeing that Stolypin’s
position could be undermined, were determined to replace the Stolypin law by a more
equitable system. The Social Democrats feared the creation of a strong yeomanry, which
would imperil the cause of the revolution. They demanded the confiscation of all large estates
without redemption. How implementing such a radical reform? In 1906, the Party Congress at
Stockholm had decided in favour of a “municipalization” instead of a “nationalization” of all
confiscated land. But the still divided Socialists lacked strong allies in the Second Duma for
their reforms. The Bolshevik fraction opposed the rather timid reform plans submitted by the
Kadets and the Right fractions. In the mean time, they attacked the Kadets as supporters of
landownership, because an alliance with the Narodniks was more adavantageous, though the
Narodnik programme had been disqualified by Lenin as a “utopian” mirage. Finally, the
Social-Democratic Duma fraction named the Menshevik I. G. Tsreteli, I. P. Ozol and the
Bolshevik G. A. Aleksinskii as their three official orators in the Duma.

Stolypin refused to consider thoroughgoing reform proposals from the opposition. He argued
that the principle of obligatory expropriation would lead - ultimately - to nationalization,
because the peasants would demand all of the well-cultivated lands rather then to emigrate to

25 Alfred Levin, The Second Duma. A Study of the Social-Democratic Party and the Russian Constitutional
Experiment, Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966 (1940).
26 This paragraph is largely based on ibid., pp. 156-199; Dorothy Atkinson, The End of the Russian Land

Commune 1905-1930, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1983, pp. 56-113.

9
Siberia. The whole opposition remained in direct disagreement with the basic principles of the
Stolypin’s land reforms. But Stolypin noticed that the opposition was deeply divided on the
necessity of the expropriation of large estates and on how to manage the agrarian reforms.
Liberals, Narodniks and Social Democrats advocated a separate bill. The Social Democrats,
however, took the most radical stance and demanded obligatory expropriation of land which
would be given to democratically elected local organs from which the population could rent
land. The Social Democrats attacked the government and then the Kadets for their presumed
political dishonesty and their betrayal of the peasantry. Hence, the united front of the
opposition front against Stolypin had fallen apart and would hasten the ultimate fate of the
Second Duma. On 9 July 1907, Stolypin dissolved his “incompetent” Duma without prior
warning. Then, Stolypin announced the election of a Third Duma, this time mainly composed
of representatives from the property-owning classes.

Parliamentary inexperience and propagandistic aims may explain the impotency of the Second
Duma. Of the numerous parties, no single one had been able - or willing - to make immediate
compromises on secondary matters in order to gain ultimate ends. The Narodniks were always
wavering between legislation and revolution. The Kadets were unable to make a durable
reformist coalition with the peasant deputies and the internally divided Social Democrats. 27
Though the Social Democrats had formed a single fraction in the Duma, they could not
overcome the differences between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.28 Especially with regard to
tactics vis-à-vis the Government and the liberal “bourgeois” politicians, differences remained
significant. Though both fractions were in favour of a thoroughgoing democratization of the
state and an expropriation of the landed aristocracy, the Mensheviks remained more gradualist
while the Bolsheviks thought that the implosion of the Tsarist regime was imminent. The
Bolsheviks trusted on the unskilled workers having freshly arrived from the countryside,
while the Mensheviks trusted on the skilled and better paid workers in small shops, the metal
industry and the (public) services (post, telegraph, railroads). These “aristocratic workers”
were more interested in “workers’ control”, than in a socialist revolution. The printers, for
instance, opposed a proletarian take-over and adhered to the idea that capitalism could
continue for the foreseeable future. 29 They were reformists and thought that parliamentarism
could create a legal framework for he unions and for collective bargaining with the
employers. Hence, the rank-and-file of the most trade unions seemed to be in favour of the
Menshevik positions.30 The Mensheviks created in the Duma fraction a committee they
dubbed the “railway section” for the purpose of gathering information on
bureaucratic oppression of railway workers. To this committee the fraction
appointed four railway workers, all Mensheviks. The Mensheviks, when joining the
socialist-liberal Government in May 1917, obtained for Irakli Tsereteli the portfolio of
Communications (Post, Telegraph. 31

27 Levin, o.c. p. 357-359.

28 Dan, o.c., pp. 371-397.
29 Diane Koenker and William g. Rosenberg, “Skilled Workers and the Strike Movement in Revolutionary

Russia”, in Journal of Social History, 1986, 19, 4, p. 618.

30 Theodore Dan: ”The Russian Mensheviks […] set about the restoration and strengthening of the

trade-union, cultural, and other workers’ organizations that had withstood destruction; the founding of
new organizations of the same type; the conquering of new spheres or organized workers’ initiative
(social insurance, dor instance), the creation of a trade-union, co-operative, insurance, general cultural
workers’ press and of Social-Democratic reviews […]. Dan, o.c., p. , p. 392.
31 ). It was said that Tsreteli’s policy reflected that of the old regime. Koenker and Rosenberg, o.c. 1989, p.

217.

10
Crisis

In the summer of 1907 the Social Democratic Party was in a deplorable state of disarray.
Lenin had not succeeded in taking control of the Central Committee. The Bolsheviks could
only outvote the Mensheviks and their Bundist allies with the aid of the Poles and Lets.
Political pressure had become unbearable. The Party was suffering mass destruction and was
reduced to a skeleton in several industrial towns (Kazan, Kursk and Tambov). Many local
militants were arrested or banned on charges of maintaining a secret organization and an
arsenal.

The basic differences between Lenin and Martov had remained essentially the same as in
1903. The ultimate goal of both was still the proletarian revolution, but the Menshevik could
not imagine an imminent proletarian revolution, certainly not after the dissolution of the
Second Duma. For them, the Party had first to create the political conditions for such a victory
within the framework of a constitutional regime. The Mensheviks rejected the idea of
maintaining an underground resistance to the Stolypin administration and proposed to
“liquidate” these underground activities and to call for a broader, open workers’ party,
operating legally and peacefully. Premature strikes and extreme opposition should be avoided.
But Lenin fiercely opposed the ideas of the “liquidators”. Meanwhile, both fractions also
clashed in the areas of “partisan” (terrorist) struggle, trade unions, participation in the legal
press and instructions for the future members of the Third Duma.

Lenin opted for a clash with the regime and argued that - under certain conditions - the Party
had to resort to “expropriation” of the rich. He insisted that these “partisan” activities had to
be guided by the Party. The Fourth and Fifth Party Congresses, however, ordered to disband
the fighting units. Lenin’s arguments were qualified as “anarchistic”. Meanwhile, a raid on a
treasury wagon with 250,000 rubles in Tiflis indicated that in some southern borderlands of
the Russian Empire party militants radicalised. Furthermore, the option of terrorism was still
alive. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks could now agree on calling for stronger ties with the trade
unions. The Mensheviks insisted on political neutrality in order to avoid internal strives in the
unions and repression. Meanwhile, some Bolsheviks decided to create their own illegal
unions.

The question of participation in the Third Duma was endangering Party unity, but Lenin’s
position in this remained relatively close to the position of the Mensheviks.. In his own ranks
Lenin “still suffered the consequences of the Social Democratic tactical error in boycotting
the First Duma and his stand seemed inconsistent with his own attitude toward parliamentary
activity- particularly after the ‘state revolution’ of June 3, 1907.” 32 Lenin only saw in the
Duma a “toy addition to the bureaucratic and police structure”, where “gangs of bourgeois
politicians are bargaining wholesale and retail about ‘people’s freedom’, ‘liberalism’,
‘democracy’, ‘republicanism and other popular commodities.” 33

The anti-participationists, led by B. O. Bogdanov, justified their decision as a weapon in the

struggle against constitutionalist illusions. But it would also be more reasonable to join in the
electoral campaign in order to popularise the Social Democratic programme. Hence, the

32 Alfred Levin, The Third Duma, Election and Profile, Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1973, p. 45.
33 ‘Lenin quoted in ibid., p. 45.

11
Social Democratic platform for the Third Duma offered a compromise between Menshevik
and Bolshevik opinion. In a first section, an appeal was inscribed to mobilise all revolutionary
forces in the electoral campaign. All non-Socialist parties were now anathema (Octobrists,
Kadets).34 The Social Democrats thought of a possible uprising against Tsarism by telling the
whole truth from the Duma tribune. The Party promised to fight against the reaction and the
Kadets, the rich, the bureaucracy, etc. by offering their own demands for democracy,
socialism, a democratic republic, equality of all nations, civil liberties, public education.
Confiscation of all public and royal land and all large estates, had to be given over to
democratically elected organs and distributed locally). Labour legislation would include an
eight-hour day, holidays, state insurance, prohibition of overtime work, public works for the
unemployed, etc. After publication of this programme some organizations nonetheless
intensified their anti-boycott activities, while other organizations oscillated sharply and and
some others were holding out for a boycott.

The Revolution in the provincial towns

The unexpected collapse of Tsarism in February 1917 was the result of a crisis deep within
the structures of the Russian State. The collapse of Tsarism was caused by three factors: the
radical incapacity of the Tsarist economy to deal with a modern industrial war, the
organization of a mass army drawn from the peasantry, and a growing hatred of the war.
Russia’s backwardness as a whole gave the revolutionary movement its opportunity. The
ruling class was just as much taken by surprise as the revolutionaries. No alarm was felt. The
revolutionary groups had spent the preceding decade in venomous squabbling. Yet, in the
space of three days the Tsarist regime collapsed and in another eight months the Bolsheviks
were ruling Russia. The genesis of the new regime was based on the masses of Petrograd,
together with the hordes of soldiers – peasants in uniform. Until the eve of the Bolshevik
insurrection in October 1917 the de facto authority of the soviets was felt in the administrative
and military apparatus. Then, the soviets took over the municipal administrations and
institutions, paralysed the police and formed the backbone of the new regime. The soviets
were no longer “private” bodies forming the so-called “civil society”, but official institutions
governing the country. Politically, the Mensheviks, SRs and also the Bolsheviks were, willy-
nilly, politically representing the workers and soldiers of the soviets. This situation of dual
power ended with the liquidation of the Provisional Government. It meant the end of the
“bourgeois” regime having been established after the fall of Tsar Nicholas II.

More recently, studies analysing the situation in the provincial towns, offer more clarity to the
question how the October Revolution of 1917 spread from Petrograd to other areas.35 Local
groups of militants were at the origins of most revolutionary upheavals in many provincial
cities. That was the case in Baku, in Kronstadt, in Krasnoiarsk, in other Siberian towns, in
Saratov and the cities in the Volga Region, in Tver and in Smolensk. It was, however, only in
the evening of 26 October 1917 that messages arrived at Smolny announcing that the
revolution had taken Minsk, Kharkov, Samara, Kazan, Ufa, Yaroslavl, and also Mogilev, the
Army Headquarters. On 30 October 1917, the Bolsheviks decided to finish with Kerensky.
Sailors from Kronstadt and Helsingfors moved to the front and soon Kerensky’s attempt to
move counter-revolutionary troops to Petrograd received a decisive blow. N. N. Sukhanov

34 Elwood (ed.), o.c., pp. 116-117.

35 Diane P. Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, o,c.

12
noted in his memoirs that “the soldiers, sailors and workers of Petersburg have shown that
arms in hand they can and will assert their will and the power of democracy.” 36 Many
historians have attributed the success of the October Revolution to the Russian revolutionary
tradition and the events in 1905. Whatever the merits of this arguments, they are also
obscuring the importance of active networks and participatory structures in the provincial
towns. Informal networks like strike committees were here facilitating revolutionary
mobilizations and enabled the Bolsheviks to seize power practically without shedding blood.
Hence, one should study these events by analysing the various regions and their collective
responses of local workers, soldiers and peasants. 37

The military played nonetheless a crucial role in the overthrowing of the old regime. The rear
garrisons in the provincial towns were totalling each some 25,000 soldiers and officers and
were concentrated near to the civilian population. Everywhere, the military enjoyed
considerable autonomy. In the beginning of the revolutionary take-over, they played a critical
role in ensuring a swift regime change. In several towns, some Cossack divisions participated
in the revolution at the side of the Bolsheviks. Elsewhere they joined the White armies. Parts
of the Russian Army were not attained by revolutionary propaganda and were anti-Bolshevik.
The abortive Kornilov-coup in August 1917, meant, however, a turning-point in the role of
the Army in national politics and prepared the ground for the October Revolution.

The Bolshevik personnel in the province had different origins or backgrounds. In Saratov,
most Bolsheviks were “non-workers”, i.e. intellectuals. In Kiev, workers’ participation was
hampered by low education. Hence, theze workers refused to stand as candidates for the
gorkom.38 Tensions between the groups of the fabzavkom in the factories with their Central
Council in Petrograd were signalled. Because the trade-union movement was structurally very
decentralized, it was relatively easy for the Bolsheviks to obtain the consent of the local
union-branches in the factories. Some groups of factory workers formed Red Guards and
wanted to follow the example of Petrograd. In the Urals, the Bolshevik leaders had a strong
tradition of violence. In Ufa, where the local duma was controlled by the Bolshevik, combat
groups were formed as well, but the revkom had to fall back on militant miners of the vicinity.
On 27 November 1917, the Mensheviks left the soviet. The latter now adopted a pro-
Bolshevik stance. Six provincial towns (Astrakhan, Kiev, Odessa, Omsk, Kharkov, Nikolaev)
possessed militias grouping between 1,000 and 3,500 men. Of them, only Omsk became a
Bolshevik stronghold. The chief playground of the Bolsheviks was not the workers’ militia
but the local soviets. In some places the Bolsheviks they did not organise their followers into
separate fractions. But the Bolshevik’s greater sense for discipline gave them everywhere a
competitive advantage in the revolutionary organizations.

In Saratov, the Bolsheviks gained the confidence of the workers after having lost it because of
their “un-patriotic” behaviour in waraffairs.39 The Cossack forces in the Volga vicity did not
sweep the Bolsheviks, but they had nonetheless succeeded in disbanding the local soviets
during the Kornilov events. In the meantime, some Bolsheviks obtained high functions in the
public bodies. On 16 October 1917, Bolshevik V. V. Kubyshev, who led the Bolshevik forces
in Samara, was elected mayor of the city. But the city duma turned to the Orenburg Cossacks
for rescue. In January 1918, the Saratov soviet formed the so-caled Eastern Army of

36 Sukhanov, o.c., p. 667.

37 John Keep, “Oktober in the Province”, in Richard Pipes (ed.), Revolutionary Russia, Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1968, pp. 180-216.
38 Ibid., p. 182.
39 Ibid., p. 185.

13
volunteers and garrison soldiers in response to the Orenburg and Astrakhan soviets appealing
for help against the Cossacks. The Eastern Army could prevent Astrakhan from being
occupied by the Cossacks. Meanwhile, the Ural Cossacks were approaching Saratov. The
Saratov soviet succeeded in raising fresh troops for a Special Army with the special task to
sweep the Cossacks from the Volga region. Unfortunelitly, the Special Army was defeated in
a period of peasant unrest behind the frontlines, while nearby Samara had now fallen into the
hands of the forces of the Constituent Assembly. These defeats were also due to the
preaviously disbanding of the Saratov garrison. About 7,000 troops of the former Imperial
Army had been demobilised, but these demobilised men set up a soldiers’ union (frontoviki)
demanding jobs and a preferential treatment. On several occasions these demobilised soldiers
clashed with Red Guard detachments.

The party’s success in local elections raised the problem of opportunism and declining
revolutionary élan. At Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the Bolsheviks won four fifths of the town duma
seats Its executive committee eclipsed the soviet. In Nizhnii Novgorod the gubkom exercised
responsabilities that were the domain of the gorkom. But the Bolshevik Party was by no
means a well-oiled machinery. Though the Central Committee was in contact with some 640
organizations and individuals, “Sverdlov’s office seemed to have welcomed virtually any and
all connections comimg to its notice.”40 Hence, John Keep has argued that the weak links
between the local bodies and the centre were not only due to technical reasons, but also to
local preferences. Information was frequently transmitted by informal channels and courriers
travelling to the provincial towns. In Saratov, Kazan and Nizhnii Novgorod, one was
informed of the decisions in Petrograd by sparse information coming from the Petrograd
leadership.

Sometimes local Bolshevik organizations were more efficient at the lower level than at the
summit. Hence, the October Revolution was not so much won by the Bolsheviks as lost by
their opponents.41 Local Bolsheviks bodies preferred managing their own affairs. In Kazan,
the transfer of power occurred as a military coup organised by the pro-Bolshevik garrison.
Only after this action, the soviet installed a civilian Revolutionary Committee by a majority
vote. In the Volga towns, the pattern of events was similar. In Samara, the Bolsheviks
included non-Bolsheviks in their Revolutionary Committee in order to make them acceptable
to the garrison. In Saratov, where some initial hesitations in the soviet had existed to support
the revolution, shootings occurred.

The local committees were in most cases reluctant to accept Lenin’s plead that they break
with the Mensheviks, particularly when the latter took a left-wing stance. In Saratov, the
Bolshevik rank-and-file prefered unity with the Mensheviks although the Bolsheviks had
officially broken with the Mensheviks in April 1917. But conciliatory and unitarian
tendencies survived for a longer time in Ukraine, Siberia, Central Asia, the Urals. Of 15
gorkomy in Siberia, 8 did not split up until the 6th Party Congress of 26 July-3 August 1917,
and 5 until October 1917, or even later. These organizational weaknesses may help explain
why the local committees had not been adequately informed about the impending insurrection
in Petrograd and why they remained ill-prepared to similar actions. The situation was not that
different in het Central Industrial region, where the committees were occupied by peaceful
activities. Moreover, the Central Industrial region and the Urals suffered from declining
industries (textiles, mining, metallurgy) and unemployment, but their homogenous labour

40 Ibid., p. 187.
41 Ibid., p. 190.

14
force living in isolated settlements had a militant past and backed the Bolsheviks, while the
soldiers of the local garrisons were radicalising. In Ivanovo-Voronezh, the Bolsheviks
received no information from the party centre in Petrograd, while the SRs were better
informed. The Bolshevik order was here “painlessly” achieved after a meeting of the town
duma and the appointment of a revolutionary staff. Under the impact of the ungoing fightings
in Moscow, the local Bolsheviks decided to expand the revolutionary staff with members of
other political parties, the soviet executive and the garrison. But this staff was soon disbanded
and its functions were passed over to the soviet and duma both controlled bij de Bolsheviks.

Tver

On the basis of newspaper accounts, memoirs and previously closed archives, Hugh Phillips 42
analysed the Bolshevik rise to power in the provincial capital of Tver and the Tver guberniia.
In early 1917, the Bolshevik party was among the weakest political groups in the city, but, by
the end of the year, the Bolsheviks had taken power in a peaceful revolution. This success was
attributable to their uncompromising denunciation of the imperialist war, their promises to
transfer the land to the peasants and the factories to the workers. The Bolsheviks also
benefited from the food crisis that turned catastrophic by late 1917. In October 1917, the
Bolsheviks, with the support of the garrison, swept away all resistance against a background
of economic disintegration, unemployment, starvation and social crisis in a context of
drunken and murdurous mobs, workers’ discontent, peasants’ land hunger and shortages of
raw materials and food. In 1905, industrialized Tver had been a major centre of the
Revolution. Now, the local textile industry was especially hard hit because of its dependency
on imported American cotton. The Morozov works still employed about 15,000 workers.
Among them many were cruelly oppressed women. n 1917 no Bolshevik propaganda was
necessary to incite them to action.

Tver’s new provisional government was dominated by the Kadets and supported by the
Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs). The Bolsheviks remained isolated in
their Red Suburbs. The Provisinial Government in Petrograd instructed the Tverians to restrict
their revolutionairy activities and to make no changes in the local economic situation. Soon
the local government was discredited bexause of its passivity.

After Lenin’s dramatic return to Petrograd in the second half of April 1917, Tver’s Bolsheviks
began to mobilise the masses and enroll new members among the nearly 60,000 workers. The
Bolsheviks could gain about 20 of the 70 votes, but the majority of the soviet still still leaned
to the pro-war Mensheviks. Mensheviks and non-affiliated socialists controlled the local co-
operative movement. The Bolsheviks lacking funds, remained on their ow. The Bolsheviks
took an international stance by waiting for the revolution in Germany. This strategy was
getting them nowhere.

Meanwhile, the social situation deteriorated steadily.The Control Commission of the Morozov
works issued a decree deploring the problems of drunkenness and laziness. The Control
Commission implored the workers to stop with debauchery and “foul” language. The
Bolsheviks did not particate in this moralization campaign. They demonstrated their iron

42Hugh Phillips, “The Heartland turns red. The Bolshevik seizure of power in Tver”, in Revolutionary
Russia, 2011, 14, 1: 1-21; Hugh Phillips, “Riots, strikes and Soviets: the city of Tver in 1905”, in
Revolutionary Russia, 2004, 17, 2: 49-66.

15
discipline. Workers and soldiers began to respond to their slogans of “peace, bread and land.”
In June 1917, the Bolsheviks called for demonstrations in the city centre, which provoked a
great fear among the middle classes and the Kadets, but the soldiers responded
enthusiastically.

By the end of August 1917, the Bolsheviks had already yielded significant gains during the
local duma elections. They gained 22 seats, the SRs 21 and various non-affiliated Social
Democratic groups 17. The Kadets got 12 seats and various small splinter parties got the
remaining seats. This victory was sharply contrasting with the Bolshevik results in local
elections in the 50 provincial towns of Tver. Here, the Bolsheviks received an average of only
7.5 per cent of the poll. On 1,605 soldiers and officers, 1,359, among the garrison soldiers had
voted for the Bolsheviks. Kadets, Mensheviks and SRs were far find behind the Bolsheviks.

As in Petrograd, Bolshevism could reap the benefits of Kornilov’s abortive coup. Tver’s
Bolsheviks had clearly understood the importance of the armed forces in the struggle for
power and the necessity of ending the war. Meanwhile, the peasantry was seizing aristocratic,
church and state lands without paying a financial compensation. The Bolsheviks now started
creating Red Guards. At the Berg Textile Factory, a Red Guard, including many women, was
formed. In early October 1917, new elections for the workers’ soviet ended in a victory of the
Bolsheviks. From now on, all land would be controlled by the land committees. But nothing
was done to follow up on this resolution! On 25 October 1917, the Tver workers’ soviet
discussed the issue of the relationship between the Red Guards and the regular police. Finally,
the Red Guards took over policing in the streets of Tver.

When the news of the Revolution of 25-26 October 1917 reached Tver, the city duma
announced that all socialist and democratic parties (except the Bolsheviks) should stick
together against this “contrarevolutionary” coup. The city duma concluded its message with a
“all power to the constituent assembly”. On 27 October 1917, a joint meeting of workers and
soldiers discussed the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, because this take-over
had happended without the consent of the All Russian Congress of Soviets. A Military
Revolutionary Committee (MRC) was now created consisting of 8 Bolsheviks and 1 Left SR.
Two days later, a Bolshevik delegation appeared and demanded that the city duma accept
soviet power. But the duma rejected this ultimatum and created a Committee for Public Safety
dominated by Mensheviks. Only the union of railroad workers and the provincial zwemstva
backed their initative. The workers’ and soldiers’ soviet resisted by ignoring the city dumas’s
move.

This incident clearly indicate that in some towns a large part of the city’s population was
opportunistically waiting for what would happen. The Bolshevik take-over of Tver was then
the outcome of a gradual process in which Tver soviet co-existed together with the city duma
and an administrative apparatus that was still intact. The local Bolshevik Party hesitated. On 8
November 1917, the Bolshevik workers of the Chrikovskii Cut-Glas Factory proposed to the
Petrograd Central Committee the creation a democratic government of national unity
comprising all socialist parties. Lenin rejected that idea. On 1 December 1917, the
Bolsheviks formally resigned from the city duma. On 2 December 1917, the 57th Reserve
Division announced that it had elected new officers and demanded that the Tver soviets
immediately seize power and fulfil the directives of Lenin’s Sovnarkom (Government). An
uncompromising suppression of all forms of counterrevolution was now carried out. The
Executive Committee of the soviet closed the Kadet newspaper and declared the dissolution
of the city duma. The provincial peasant soviet demanded the transfer of all power to the

16
soviets. The Bolsheviks ordered the Provincial Executive Committee to hand over all power
to the soviets. Meanwhile, the female workers of the Morozov textile factory, the province’s
largest employer, took over control of the enterprise. The Bolsheviks were now holding the
city of Tver, but not the countryside which remained under control of SRs and Mensheviks,
Soon most provincial garrisons went over to Bolshevism after having received the visit of
commissars. The elections for the Constituent Assembly were thoroughgoing prepared. The
Tver soviet sent 25 propagandists of all parties to the countryside, proportionally to the
numbers of seats in the soviet: 14 Bolsheviks, 8 Left SRs, 2 Mensheviks and 1 unaffiliated
artillary gunner. During their campaigne, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs focused on
confiscation of non-peasant land, workers’ control43 and peace for all. Of the 611,901 votes
cast, the Bolsheviks received 362,867 votes.

Smolensk

In the small city of Smolensk the role of an important Jewish community was of crucial
importance for the victory of the Revolution. 44 However, the differences between Jewish
socialists remained strong. The largest faction was the Bund which stressed the importance of
Jewish cultural autonomy, but rejected Zionism. Emancipation of all Jewish workers, the
Bund argued, could only be the result of the struggle for socialism. In addition, Smolenks had
a sizable organization, the Marxist-Zionist Poalei-Zion, which defended emigration to
Palestine. After 1905, when Tsarism had succeeded in crushing the revolution. Jewish
socialists, like other local activists, turned to legal activities by organizing cooperative
societies, insurance companies and societies of mutual aid and Enlightenment.

The First World War brought hardship to the local Jewish population. In 1915, the Jewish
bourgeoisie organised a society coming to rescue of Jewish war victims. Jewish entrepreneurs
saw the solution in opening a labour bureau and a Jewish health care society. These initiatives
were contested by socialist activists. In the summer of 1916, Smolensk was suddenly
submerged by Jewish refugees resettling in the city. Jewish Leftists were now attacking the
selfish Jewish bourgeoisie and demanded a democratization of the Jewish charity institutions.
The Provisional Government had abolished all legal privisons discreminating Jewish

43 Lenin, however, was not in favour of workers’ control. Deep-rooted “particularism” created anarchy
in the railway system. In November 1917, a workers’ committee had taken over the control of the
principal trunk line between Moscow and Petrograd. Instead of mobilising all resources to meet the
necessities of the moment, countless hours were spilt with discussions between independent groups,
like the union of switchmen, brakemen, signal workers and other lower rank employees on one hand,
and the union of conductors. One should keep in mind that most “ribbon” trade unions were led by
Bolsheviks. Local shop organizations took over factory affairs, often merging in this “anarchist”
process with participation of the shop or factory committees. The metal workers of Petrograd who
were under firm control of the Bolsheviks and reputedly “class conscious”, were less interested in a
national union than in building their local shop union. The metal workers had joined by one count
some 24 different shop unions by early May 1917. A. G. Shlapnikov condemned this process of
fragmentation, but the problem persisted, especially among the “stokers” (kochegary), the unskilled
workers and the gold and silver workers. The result of this anarchy were highly different wage scales
in state and private contracts. Similar patterns had emerged among the leather workers, luggage and
case makers and among railway workers working in metal works, depots and shops. William
Rosenberg, “Workers and Workers’ Control in the Russian Revolution”, in History Workshop, 1978, 5, pp.
89-97.
44 Michael C. Hickey, “Revolution on the Jewish street: Smolenks, 1917”, in Journal of Social History,

1998, 42 (4): 823-850.

17
settlements. Hence, Jewish emancipation had become a reality. Socialist activists and trade-
union militants were now stressing themes of the class struggle instead of Jewish identity. The
Jewish people could now organize as citizens and participate in public affairs. Unions sprang
up in all trades. Jews joinded the reconstituted Russian political parties as well, especialy the
SR, the “united” SD and the Party of People’s Freedom (Kadets).

However, Jews still considered themselves as culturally outsiders with their own associations.
Democratization of these Jewish voluntary associations led to socialist majorities in their
boards. Finally, socialists and bourgeois decided to set aside their political differences. But
the revolutionary context also encouraged the Jews to organize themselves along class and
ideological lines. The 1917 May Day parade organised by all Jewish socialist parties with the
Bund appealed directly to working class identities. Most Jewish workers, artisans and clerks
were now fighting for higher wages and working class control and they strengthened the
socialist movement in its struggle for control over the city government. Finally, a United
Socialist Workers’Party emerged, but without englobing the Bund and the Zionist
organizations.

During the electoral campaign for the city duma in May-June 1917, the Bund proposed an all-
socialist electoral bloc uniting the Jewish parties, the Mensheviks, SRs, and the Peoples’
Socialists, but with class issues at the centre of its programme. Unity remained fragile. A
Non-Party Jewish Group, including a few socialists, promoted individual Jewish candidates.
During mass meetings, Zionists and members of Agudas Israel argued that their city-duma
candidates should fight for “the national soul” by supplying kosher meat. The Socialist Bloc,
including all Jewish socialist parties, gained an overwhelming victory in the 23 July Duma
election, taking 20,880 of 28,851 votes. The non-party Jewish candidates only collected 550
votes. However, thousands of Jews engaged in the battlefield of Jewish cultural activities and
Theodore Herzl’s death on 27 June was celebrated with Jewish national banners. Yiddish was
considered as the Jewish national language and Yiddish theater became a working-class
activity.

Worsening living and working conditions sharpened class conflicts and disrupted socialist
conciliationism. Workers were now attracted by the Left SR. The Bolsheviks stressed social
polarization and class struggle in their propaganda. But Jews showed litte interest in
Bolshevism. Like in other Russian cities, popular support for the Mensheviks and SRs
plummeted. The reason for this rejection of Bolshevism and Menshevism by Jewish workers
has to be sought in the Jewish community. Until then, Jews had been the vanguard of the local
labour movement. In several industrial sectors, where Jewish workers were absent
(metalworks, woodworks, leatherworks), Bolshevik militants pressed for strikes and obliged
the Jewish employers to negotiate on wage increases. Class conflict was a reality, also for
Jewish workers. But their Jewish socialist leaders now stepped out of alignement with the
frame of class struggle and sought compromises with the employers. Non-socialist Zionists
seized this opportunity and turned the attention of the Jews to community aspects.

After Lenin’s seizure of power, the Smolensk Military Revolutionnary Committee and the
Duma Committee to Save the Revolution formed a joint committee of Public Safety.
Throughout November 1917, the Menshevik-SR Duma bloc and the Bolshevik-Left SR
soviet shared power. The Constituent Assembly Elections gave the Bolsheviks a large victory
with 11,339 votes in Smolensk. The Bolsheviks took three of four working class districts. The
Kadets polled 8,097 votes. The PSP (Popular Socialists) and the Mensheviks got only 6.643

18
votes city-wide. A Menshevik/Bund list won in district 8, but this list took less votes than the
Kadet and Bolshevik votes combined.

Krasnoiarsk

In 1917, Siberia counted 9 million people. Many of them were recent immigrants having
come from European Russia and Ukraine. The cities were relatively small in comparison to
European Russian cities. Thanks to the Trans-Siberian Railway, some cities had grown
quickly. Omsk and Tomsk had more than 100,000 inhabitants and Barnaul, Novonikolaevsk,
Krasnoiarsk, Irkutsk and Chita over 50,000 citizens.. By early March 1917, the towns were
entirely in the hands of the Committees of Public Safety or Public Organizations. The
revolution was led by local executive committees and soviets The soviets in Omsk, Barnaul,
Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk and Verkhneudinsk were more radical than those in other Siberian
cities.45 The Executive Committees were usually controlled by Social Democrats who
exercised real authority.

By 1917, the Siberian city of Krasnoiarsk, with a population of 92,000 inhabitants, was
connected to European Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway. About 10,000 of its inhabitants
were workers employed at the maintenance workshops of the railway. A garrison of 25,000
soldiers was concentrated in barracks. The collapse of Tsarist power in Krasnoiarsk was
largely caused by increasing economic hardship. Already by late 1915, railway workers were
ventilating defeatist positions on the war. In 1916, rumours about a general strike were
circulating. In May 1916, a city-wide pogrom erupted over the high costs of food and stores
of Jewish traders were sacked. Like the rest of Siberia, Krasnoiarsk was not accustomed to
pogroms on the scale seen in 1916. Notwithstanding these tensions, anti-government activities
remained weak and fragmented. In January 1916, a printers’ strike broke out. Individual
socialists tried to transform it into a protest movement, but the police arrested the members of
the strike committee.

During the war, the consumer co-operative movement, set up by Socialists with the help of
political exiles, was prospering. Its activities were boosted by efforts made by the official City
Provisions Commission and provided the Socialists with a much-needed organizational base.
The news about the Revolution in Petrograd arrived via the Krasnoiarsk railway telegraph on
28 February 1917 in the form of a telegram sent by State Duma commissar Aleksandr
Bublikov. But local tsarist functionaries could hide the telegram. On 2 March 1917, the
rumours about a revolution were nonetheless confirmed. By 5 March 1917, a few days after
the implosion of Tsarism, the city board of Krasnoiarsk was replaced by new structures,
including a supra-class Committee of Public Safety (CPS), a Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies.46 Though the Kadet party was prominently present in the city duma. The socialist
leaders discussed the situation with the co-operative movement and asked the mayor to
convene an extraordinary session of the city duma. Several duma members were in favour of
widening the organizing circle to public organizations local war industrialists, the fire-fighting

45 Russell E. Snow, The Bolsheviks in Siberia, 1917-1958, Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1977.
46 Alistair Dickins, “A revolution in March: the overthrow of tsarism in Krasnoiarsk, in Historial

Research, 90, 2017: 11-31.

19
society and the railway workers union. 47 The Tsarist authorities remained conspicuously
absent. On 3 March, province governor Ia. G. Golobolov, who was in Irkutsk, returned to
Krasnoiarsk. There a multitude of workers, soldiers and unaffiliated people had invaded the
city hall. The extraordinaire session of the city duma turned then into a political rally
installing a provisional administration. It meant the end of Tsarism in Krasnoiarsk.

The Socialists now focused on organizing the 3,000 railway workers. 48 Thanks to their large
numbers and their strategic position within the communications network, the railwaymen
represented a major social force supporting the revolutionary process. Because the authorities
feared strikes during the war, the railwaymen had endured highly repressive discipline. The
railwaymen opposed the war, but also geared repression. Until 1917, no official trade union of
railwaymen existed in Krasnoiarsk. But most railwaymen had joined the co-operative
movement bridging the social and political distance between workers and socialist
intelligentsia.

In the first week of March 1917, the Krasnoiarsk garrison went over to the new regime. In
May 1916, the conscripts had already refused orders to combat rioters during the pogrom.
Then, an active socialist underground also emerged. The bloodless and the rapid
establishment of a revolutionary authority was the work of revolutionary activities in the
different economic sectors (railwaymen, soldiers, co-operators).

In Siberia, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks remained far longer united than their comrades in
European Russia. The Bolsheviks in Krasnoiarsk only broke with the Mensheviks in mid-May
1917. The Barnaul Bolsheviks set up their own organization in early June 1917. The
organizations of Omsk, Novonikolaevsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk and Chita remained united after the
July Days. After the Kornilov coup the Siberian soviets started gravitating to Bolshevik
positions. However, on the eve of the October Revolution, Mensheviks and SRs were still
firm controlling the urban soviets of Omsk, Novonikolaevsk, Irkutsk, Verkhneudinsk, and
Chita, while the Bolsheviks only held Tomsk, Barnaul and Krasnoiarsk. Though the
Bolsheviks maintained control of Central Siberia, they nonetheless maintained a common
front with the moderates until early December 1917, but the Third Congress of Soviets of
Western Siberia recognized the new regime in Petrograd. Eastern Siberia became under
Bolshevik control after fierce street battles in Irkutsk. Bolshevik victory was based on
considerable support received from antiwar soldiers and radicalised workers. By the summer
of 1918, White armies had, however, defeated the Bolshevik forces and took control of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. Siberia was turned into a staging ground for the Whites.

Saratov

47 It was only in 1917 that various railway groups merged into the All Russian Union of Railway
workers. However, local groups had already taken control of railway shops and stations. In other
sectors of the economy the situation was not that different. This phenomenon of tsekhovschina of
“shopism” complicated Lenin’s direction of the economy.
48 The railway workers did not form one single category of workers. Among them were the conductors,

clerks, metalworkers in the shops, technicians, unskilled workers. Until 1917, repressive measures had
prevented the emerging of railway workers.

20
In Saratov, Bolsheviks followed their own understandings of the revolution. 49 Saratov
opposed Lenin’s acceptance of the peace treaty with Germany and supported the Left
Communists who were pleading for a “revolutionary war” against Germany, or for Trotsky’s
“neither-war-nor-peace” slogan. Opposition against Brest-Litovsk disappeared, but localism
(mestnochestvo) remained. Until early 1919, the Saratov Bolsheviks ignored the centre and
navigated an independent course. Moscow soon intervened in early 1919 by purging the local
leadership and, finally, by replacing local leaders with outsiders. In mid-May 1918, an
uprising was defeated. The local opposition was formed by a multitude of “disgraceful
rabble” (White Guards, Black Hundreds, Cossacks, Right SRs, Czechoslovaks and also
Mensheviks). Some rebels had fallen under the influence of Ukrainian anarchists who were
plundering their way to Saratov, often dispersing local soviets on their way.

A period of anarchy endangered Bolshevik rule. The soviet dominated by the Bolshevik Party
had few reliable forces at its disposal. Local workers had refused to enrol in the armed forces,
but the soviet defended these “enraged anarchists”. Troops joined by Tsarist officers and SRs
demanded the disarmament of all workers and called for the creation of a new government
and free elections. But the metalworkers voiced their backing of soviet power. Finally, in the
night of 16-17 May 1918, this revolt was crushed and the moderates were expelled from the
soviet. The April elections had to be annulled.

Also in a host of other cities rebellions occurred. In Atkarsk, Kamyshin, Tsaritsyn, Tula,
Sormovo, Samara, Syzran, Khvalynsk, Volsk, Tambov and Tula (where the armies of admiral
Kolchak operated), the rebellions were destroyed while the Mensheviks appealed for restoring
the Constituent Assembly. The Mensheviks backed the programme of the Petrograd
conference of factory and shop delegates which also appealed for restoration of the
democratic organs. They also opposed a peace treaty with Germany. In the mean time, the
Bolsheviks took measures to liquidate the opposition of Mensheviks and SRs. In Saratov, the
Mensheviks were officially expulsed from the ranks of the working class. Police measures
against the city’s population followed. At the end of 1919, the whole Saratov province was
controlled by the Bolsheviks.

Voronezh

Thanks to Stefan Karsch, we are extremely well informed about the situation in the less
developed province of Voronezh. 50 Its capital Voronezh counted 95,000 inhabitants. About
10,000 workers were employed in factories. About 15,000 workers were working in seasonal
industries (sugar and alcohol production). On 6 March 1917, the Provisional Government
took over power in Voronezh by appointing a Commissar. This peaceful take-over could trust
on the presence of a large garrison keeping order in the streets. Members of the zemstva and
city duma were not dismissed and the city duma appointed an Executive Committee of Social
Security. Several citizens’ committees also formed a Committee of Social Organizations. A
workers’ soviet sprang up on 4 march 1917, a few days later followed by a soldiers’ soviet. In
April, a peasants’ soviet representing the interests of workers, soldiers and peasants in all
matters was formed.

49 Donald J. Raleigh, “How the Saratov Bolsheviks imagine their enemies”, in Slavic Review, 57, 1998, 2,
pp. 330-331.
50 Stefan Klarsch, Die bolsjewistische Machtergreifung im Gouvernement Voronež (1917-1919), Stuttgart:

Franz Steiner Verlag 2006.

21
The socialist parties had meanwhile emerged from illegality and prepared for 1 of May
demonstrations. Unity between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was disturbed by Lenin’s April
Theses. A mutiny of the soldiers against an announced transfer of their garrison to the front
was repressed. In Voronezh, the Social Democratic split gave birth to a tiny Menshevik
fraction. Meanwhile, the local working class was still weakened by unemployment and labour
conflicts led by burgeoning unions. At the end of May 1917, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs
were pleading for an immediate take-over of power, which provoked a crisis in the soviet
dominated by the Mensheviks and SRs.

The July crisis of 1917, with its spontaneous revolt against the Provisional Government, was
seen by the local Mensheviks as a tentative of German spies to destabilize Russia’s war
efforts, but they were not convicted. Bolshevik agitation in the barracks was now forbidden.
These disciplinary measures contributed to a radicalization of the Bolshevik militants, but the
Bolsheviks were defeated during the duma elections of July 1917. The SRs obtained a
majority in the city duma in which the bourgeois parties lost their influence.

Table 1: Distribution of seats in the Voronezh duma of July 1917.

Parties Seats
Socialist Block (SRs and Mensheviks) 47
Kadets 17
League of Homeowners 7
Diverse Democratic organizations 6
Bolsheviks 3
Source: Stefan Karsch, o.c., p. 37.

Table 2: Distribution of seats in the Voronezh Executive Commttee

4 March 8 March 9 March April End July

Totals 7 25 30 42 50
SRs 4 9 20 34 33
Mensheviks 2 4 6 2 3
Bolsheviks 1 2 4 4 5
Populist 1 1
socialists
Bund 1 1
Partyless 7

Source: Ibid., p. 47.

With the penetration of Denikin’s Army in the region, the situation changed. Bolshevik power
was nonetheless re-established in the beginning of 1919 after the defeat of Denikin’s army. In
the province, important peasants’ upheavals against “war communism” had meanwhile
profoundly disturbed the relation between peasantry and Bolsheviks.

22
The resonance of the failed Kornilov coup in combination with the arrival of the contra -
revolutionary forces of Kalidin and the Don Cossacks was to the advantage of the Bolsheviks.
Kadets and SRs had already lost the population’s favours and the Bolsheviks could form a
Revolutionary Organization Committee for the defence of the Revolution. Bolsheviks and
Left SRs decided to take power but they failed to find enough supporters among the
population to carry out their plan. On 30 October 1917 power was firmly in Bolshevik hands
and the soviet was undone of its authority. Appeals to resist the Bolshevik usurpation
remained, however, without reaction. The imminent arrival of Kaledin’s army enabled the
Bolsheviks to mobilize the factory militias and the garrison. But the Bolshevik revolution was
slow to conquer all hearts. Until in the middle of 1918, the personnel of the city services
refused to support the Bolsheviks. 51

Nizhnii Novgorod

Since 1860, Nizhnii Novgorod was linked to Russia by railway. In neighbouring Sormovo,
the shipbuilding industry started producing all-steel river ships. In 1899, the wharfs employed
10,748 workers. Sormovo also started producing railway wagons, steam locomotives and rails
for the Trans-Siberian Railway. Labour conflicts occurred in this period of fast growth.
Though the length of the working day had been officially limited to 11.5 hours in 1887, the
factory managers forced the workers to longer working days. Violent uprisings were followed
by repression in the 1880s and 1990s. In this period the local economy was booming and
several other factories, employing some 10,000 workers, had been built in the surroundings of
Nizhnii Novgorod.

The Revolution of 1905 caused a political earthquake in Nizhnii Novgorod and Sormovo. The
workers of the locomotive factory were the first to go on strike. Some 4,000 other workers
followed their example. A workers’ soviet demanding important social and economic reforms
(8-hour day, wage increases, re-employing of sacked workers, etc.) declared a general strike.
Because of the economic crisis and high employment, the strike was lost. The heavy industry
in Nizhnii Novgorod could only survive thanks to governmental orders. For the workers, the
situation meanwhile remained critical.

During the first years of the war, increasing food prices caused starvation. In July 1916,
heavily repressed strikes already announced the coming revolution. When on 1 March 1917
the February Revolution was known, a general strike spread over the industrial area of Nizhnii
Novgorod. A rally mobilising about 30,000 participants spread that day over the city. The
garrison decided to support the movement. On 7 March 191, a workers’ soviet and armed
guards were formed. The workers’ soviet totalled 48 delegates from Sormovo, 20 delegates
from Kanavino and 12 delegates from the old city centre. R-Meanwhile, rebellious soldiers
contested the governmental decision to send them to the front. The Provisional Government
sent general Aleksandr Verkhovskii with a battalion loyalist troops to Nizhnii Novgorod to
restore order. In June 1917, a new wave of strikes mobilising 30,000 strikers paralysed all

51 Ibid, p. 103-104.

23
factories.52 The factory owners reacted with a lock-out and in August and September, 231
factories with 61,000 workers were closed down.

On 26 October 1917, the population received the news of a successful Bolshevik take-over in
Petrograd. On 2 November 1917, the Red Guards arrested the loyalist guards of the
Provisional Government and soviet power was officially installed. An Executive Committee
of the Soviets, presided over by the Bolshevik I. Romanov, was elected. The first years of the
Soviet regime would bring hardship and starvation to the population. Social upheavals were
regularly disturbing the industrial areas. The growing Menshevik influence on the workers
could not be overlooked. The Bolshevik rulers were nonetheless decided to crush any social
protest. In June 1918, much blood was shed during upheavals in Sormovo and also in
Yaroslavl and in the Urals.

Conclusion

The Russian Revolution was the outcome of a complex set of factors having led to a general
revolt of the workers, soldiers and peasants against the Tsarist state. Though the revolution
had begun in Petrograd, the Revolution easily triumphed in many a provincial city. The
workers of the large factories, the peasantry and the soldiers played an important role in the
victory of the Bolsheviks and the Revolution.

The Bolshevik takeover was also the result of economic, political and social contradictions
the Tsarist regime was unable to solve. Industrialization had led to fast economic
development, creating a numerous proletariat of mainly unskilled workers drawn from the
peasantry. This working classes wanted to improve its living conditions and social position,
but these reforms were denied to them by entrepreneurs and Government.

The bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the working classes had found thanks to the Revolution of
1905 their political leaders of the Kadet party, the SR and the Social Democratic Party. These
three opposition parties were, however, unable to form a solid bloc in the Duma. Their
material interest were too diverse and intra-party struggles and clashes made that they could
not challenge the Tsarist government of Stolypin. The liberal bourgeoisie feared the growing
influence of the working class and preferred a compromise with the landed interest groups
and Tsarism on installing a constitutional monarchy. This liberal bourgeoisie did not represent
a revolutionary force. Though SRs and Socialists could form an alliance on a common
programme of expropriations and democratic reforms, they did not.

The peasantry supported the SRs who demanded expropriation of the landed nobility without
financial compensations. The Socialists demanded nationalization of all land and the big
industrial enterprises, but parties could not agree on a common agrarian programme. Both
parties became the theatre of frenzy internal struggles between leftist and rightist currents
forming their own political parties leading to a radicalisation of the Revolution. The
Bolsheviks agreed on Lenin’s strategy of exacerbating the political and social tensions leading
to a de stabilization of the parliamentary regime. The outcome was “second revolution”
sweeping the Kerensky Government after Kornilov’s failed state strike.

52According to Lenin, the movement had been the work of the White Guards. Quoted in Kristina
Küntzel, Von Nižnij Novgorod zu Gork’kij. Metamorphosen einer russischen Provinzstadt. Die Entwicklung
der Stadt von den 1890er bis zu den 1930er Jahren, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001, p. 205.

24