in the Ukraine and Finland, were supported because such movements were weakening the government. On the latter question Lenin wrote:

Why should we, Great-Russians, who have been oppressing a greater number of nations than any other people, why should we repudiate the right of separation for Poland, the Ukraine, Finland? . .

If Finland, if Poland, if the Ukraine break away from Russia, it is nothing terrible. Wherein is it bad? One who says so, is a chauvinist. One must be insane to continue the policy of Tsar Nicholas. Norway has separated from Sweden. . . .30

In his projected new program for his party (drafted in May 1917) Lenin advocated:

9. The right of all nationalities which are now part of the Russian state freely to separate and to form independent states. The republic of the Russian people should draw to itself other peoples or nationalities not through violence, but through voluntary and mutual agreement to build a common state. The common aims and brotherly union of the workers of all countries are incompatible with either direct or indirect violence practiced upon other nationalities.31

In newspaper articles and in a booklet, entitled "The Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat," Lenin put his policy in the form of questions and answers:

...

[Q:]. .. Does the State need a police of the usual type and a standing Army?

*

*

*

[A:] . . . Absolutely unnecessary. Immediately and unconditionally introduce universal arming of the people, merge them with the militia and the army. Capitalists must pay the workers for days of service in the militia.

[A:] . . . Not only must they be elected, but every step of every officer and general must be subject to control by special soldiers' committees.

[Q:] . . . Are arbitrary removals of superiors by the soldiers desirable?

They are in every respect useful and indispensable. The soldiers will obey only superiors of their own choice; they can respect no others.

*

30 Lenin, "Speech on the National Question," delivered May 12 [April 30], 1917, at the Seventh All-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP, Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 311, 313.

31

Lenin, "Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Program" (1917), Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), p. 338.

[2:] ... In favor of or against annexations?

[A:] . . . Against annexations. Any promise of a capitalist government to renounce annexations is sheer fraud.

[Q:] ... Shall the peasants at once take all the land of the landowners?

[A:] . . . All the land must be taken at once. Order must be strictly maintained by the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.

[Q:]. Must fraternisation between soldiers of the warring countries, at the front, be encouraged?

[A]... Yes, it is good and indispensable. It is absolutely necessary in all warring countries to encourage all attempts at fraternisation between the soldiers of both warring groups. 32

5. Staging the Upheaval

During the summer and fall of 1917 the political situation continued to deteriorate. Food was scarce, discipline weakened, the government's authority decreased markedly; the army, torn between loyalty to the government and sympathy with the peace propaganda, was becoming unreliable both at the fronts and at home.

The July street demonstrations, which were made up in the main of industrial workers, had proved too weak to shatter the government's position. Since then, the sizable and well-armed local garrison of Petrograd was coming over more and more to the Bolshevik side; to them, the Bolshevist "peace policy" meant all the difference between fighting and waiting, between possible death and relatively quiet life in the capital. Every hint on the part of the government that the garrison might be shipped out of Petrograd aroused “revolutionary" sentiments which were strengthened by the Bolshevik slogans. Trotsky wrote later:

The first Provisional Government . gave an obligation not to disarm and not to remove from Petrograd those military units which had taken part in the February [March] overturn."

A few regiments were sent to the front in July-August, but:

On September 8th [21] the soldiers' section of the Soviet put forward a demand that the regiments transferred to the front in connection with the July events be returned to Petrograd. This while the members of the

** Lenin, "Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat" (July 1917), Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 161-167.

Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Max Eastman, tr. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1932), vol. III, p. 88.

Coalition were tearing their hair about how to get rid of the remaining regiments.

The soldiers approached the question more brusquely. Take the offensive at the front now, in the middle of autumn? Reconcile themselves to a new winter campaign? No, they simply had no room in their heads for that idea. The patriotic press immediately opened fire on the garrison: the Petrograd regiments, grown fat in idleness, are betraying the front. The workers took the side of the soldiers. The Putilov men were the first to protest against the transfer of the regiments.

Two years after the events described above, the author of this book [Trotsky] wrote in an article dedicated to the October revolution: "As soon as the order for the removal of the troops was communicated by Headquarters to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd soviet . . it became clear that this question in its further development would have decisive political significance." The idea of an insurrection began to take form from that moment.34

Since the failure of General Kornilov in his attempt to suppress the defeatists movements, the tide had turned and the chances of a successful Bolshevik upheaval improved. In one after another of the local Soviets, among them the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, the Bolsheviks gained majorities; Trotsky was elected chairman of the powerful Petrograd Soviet. Sensing the favorable turn of events, Lenin began, in early September, to prod his Central Committee to make preparations for an uprising. Though in hiding and isolated, he exerted strong pressure and great influence upon his lieutenants in the capital. In the preparation for the uprising he displayed skill, energy, and unscrupulousness. In a letter to the Central Committee of his party Lenin wrote, from Finland, on September 25 [12], 1917:

Having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of both capitals, the Bolsheviks can, and must, take over the power of government.

They can do so because the active majority of the revolutionary elements of the people of both capitals is large enough to carry the masses, to overcome the resistance of the adversary, to smash him and to conquer power and retain it. For, by immediately proposing a democratic peace, by immediately giving the land to the peasants and by re-establishing the democratic institutions and liberties which have been mangled and shattered by Kerensky, the Bolsheviks will create a government which nobody will be able to overthrow.85

pp. 89, 90, 92.

Lenin, "The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power," Letter to the Central Committee and to the Petrograd and Moscow Committees of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (September 1917), Selected Works (Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935), vol. VI, p. 215.

But who should organize the uprising? The Central and local committees of his party would be arrested before the uprising started. When Bolshevik doubters argued that there was no machinery for an uprising, Lenin answered:

There is no apparatus? There is an apparatus: the Soviets and the democratic organisations. The international situation just now, on the eve of the conclusion of a separate peace between the British and the Germans, is in our favour. If we propose peace to the nations now we shall win. Power must be assumed in Moscow and in Petrograd at once (it does not matter which begins; even Moscow may begin); we shall win absolutely and unquestionably.36

But what if Germany should refuse to sign an armistice and should continue its offensive? Whatever his real opinion of the situation, Lenin tried to convince his party that a Bolshevik Russia would be better able to fight Germany than a tsarist or Kerensky government:

. . if our proposal for peace is rejected, if we do not secure even an armistice, then we shall become "defencists," we shall place ourselves at the head of the war parties, we shall be the "war party" par excellence, and we shall fight the war in a truly revolutionary manner. We shall take all the bread and shoes away from the capitalists. We shall leave them only crusts, we shall dress them in bast shoes. We shall send all the bread and shoes to the front.

And we shall save Petrograd.

The resources, both material and spiritual, for a truly revolutionary war in Russia are still immense; the chances are a hundred to one that the Germans will grant us at least an armistice. And to secure an armistice now would in itself mean beating the whole world.

By immediately proposing a peace without annexations, by breaking immediately with the Allied imperialists and with all imperialists, either we shall immediately obtain an armistice, or the entire revolutionary proletariat will rally to the defence of the country, and a truly just, truly revolutionary war will then be waged by the revolutionary democracy under the leadership of the proletariat.37

In taking a course toward an armed uprising and seizure of power, Lenin wanted his party to relinquish all normal activity in the regular state agencies, for example in the national conferences, assemblies, and the like which the weakening government was arranging in an attempt to find support for its policies. Against Lenin's advice, however, the Central Committee decided to participate in one of these conferences, the "Democratic Conference", which opened in Petrograd on September

30 Ibid., p. 217.

37

Lenin, "Marxism and Insurrection," Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (September 26-27 [13-14], 1917), Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, pp. 221-223.

27. Lenin, having advocated a "boycott", was infuriated. And he demanded that the Bolsheviks admit their mistake and boycott the Council of the Republic, a consultative body organized in October by the Provisional Government to function until elections could be held. creating a Constituent Assembly:

We should have boycotted the Democratic Conference; we all made a mistake in not doing so.

We must boycott the Pre-parliament [the Council of the Republic]. We must turn to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, to the trade unions, to the masses in general. We must call upon them to fight. It is to them we must issue the correct and definite slogan: Disperse Kerensky's Bonapartist gang and his spurious Pre-parliament, this TseretelliBulygin Duma.

38

6. Lenin's Offensive

The Bolshevik party was, however, divided by profound divergencies; the idea of seizing power by force was rejected by so many leaders that it is hard to say whether the majority was really on Lenin's side. Among the best-known leaders of that era only the new adept of bolshevism, Trotsky, and the less important Stalin sided with Lenin; top leaders like Zinoviev and Kamenev consistently fought Lenin's strategy and tactics, and among the second tier of leaders, Kalinin, Rykov, Milyutin, Lashevich, Frunze, Podvoiski, Nevski, Chudnovski, Tomski, Volodarski, and many others likewise opposed him.

. . In public discussion the opponents of insurrection repeated the same arguments as those of Zinoviev and Kamenev. "But in private arguments," writes Kisselev [an old worker-Bolshevik], "the polemic took a more acute and candid form, and here they went so far as to say that 'Lenin is a crazy man; he is pushing the working-class to certain ruin. From this armed insurrection we will get nothing; they will shatter us, exterminate the party and the working class, and that will postpone the revolution for years and years, etc.'" 39

The months of September and October were filled with this internal struggle. Zinoviev and Kamenev wrote in an address to the party:

Before history, before the international proletariat, before the Russian revolution and the Russian working-class, we have no right to stake the whole future at the present moment upon the card of armed insurrection.40

Kamenev, in a declaration to a non-Bolshevik Russian newspaper, stated:

. . . Not only Zinoviev and I, but also a number of practical comrades, think that to take the initiative in an armed insurrection at the present

*Lenin, "From a Publicist's Diary, The Mistakes of Our Party" (Entries of October 6, 7 [September 23, 24], 1917), Selected Works (1935 ed.), vol. VI, p. 238. "Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. III, p. 152.

"Ibid., pp. 153, 154.