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CHAPTER TWO The Events of 1917 of food and high prices, together with the inefficiency and corruption of the ruling class provoked revolt. There were frequent strikes for higher wages and for the ending of the war, and the mutinies at the front. Soldiers who were ordered out against the workers sided with them. Crowds attacked the houses of the Tsarist ministers. In this situation the government, in March 1917, ordered the dissolution of the Duma. This body, although elected on a limited franchise from which most of the workers and peasants were excluded, rejected the order for dissolution and decided to carry on. The Tsar then abdicated. In the confused period which followed the abdication there was first a provisional government formed by Liberals and other capitalist and landowning representatives in the Duma and eventually a government under Kerensky, leader of the Socialist Revolutionary party, whose authority rested partly on the Committee of the Duma but increasingly on the Committees of Workers and Soldiers (Soviets) which had sprung up all over Russia and which were rapidly pushing the less representative Duma into the background. While Kerensky’s government retained the backing of the Soviets the Bolsheviks were unable to make headway against it, but as the Kerensky government grew more unpopular, because of its efforts to continue the war, one after another of the Soviets elected Bolshevik majorities; and when an All-Russian Soviet Congress met in November 1917 (actually in October according to the old Russian calendar) a clear majority, 390 out of 676, were Bolshevik delegates, and it passed resolutions in favour of peace, the dispossession of the landowners and the setting up of a temporary ‘workers and peasants’ government, pending the election of a democratic ‘constituent assembly’ which was to decide the future constitution. Backed by successful risings in Moscow and other towns the Bolsheviks consolidated their position as the government, made peace with Germany and faced a long period of civil war provoked by reactionary groups which were supported by the British, American and other governments. One of the Bolshevik government’s first actions, a prelude to the dictatorship that followed, was to dissolve the constituent assembly as soon as it met, in January 1918, because a majority of the delegates there represented parties in opposition to the Bolshevik Party. They gave as their excuse that the voters changed their views after the elections The Bolsheviks had campaigned under the slogan “Peace, Bread and Land.” Immediately on gaining power they persuaded the second All-Russia Soviet Congress to adopt a decree on peace drafted by the Bolshevik leader, Lenin. It invited the peoples and governments of the nations at war to begin negotiations at once for peace ‘without annexations and indemnities’ and to conclude an immediate armistice. It appealed particularly to the workers of Britain, France and Germany to help the Bolsheviks stop the war and secure ‘the liberation of the toiling and exploited masses from all forms of slavery and exploitation’. The appeal met with some response from sections of the working class in various countries but was ignored by the governments with which Russia had been allied. Thereupon the Russian government entered into separate negotiations with Germany and its allies. The German authorities imposed harsh armistice terms, including the continued occupation of large territories that had been part of Tsarist Russia. Many members of the Bolshevik party wanted to reject the terms and advocated the waging of a ‘revolutionary war’. Lenin, knowing that Russia was in no position to wage such a war, declared: “It is a question of signing the terms now or signing the death sentence of the Soviet Government three weeks later” and eventually won over the Central Committee of the Party to his point of view. At the seizure of power the Bolsheviks had been opposed by the Mensheviks and the majority of the Socialist Revolutionaries. A minority of the Socialist Revolutionaries, however, gave the Bolsheviks their support and were at first represented in the first government. They resigned over disagreement about accepting the harsh German terms to end the war and over the government’s policy of subordinating the trade unions. By the middle of 1918 the Bolshevik government had arrested the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders, expelled their delegates from the Soviets and driven the parties underground, making the Communist Party the only legal political party inRussia. Thus started the half century of Communist Party government of Russia which was to put to the test the claim of the Communists that they had found the road which would lead to the speedy establishment of Socialism in Russia and in the rest of the world, and that other countries should follow their example. As a Marxist organisation the Socialist Party of Great Britain rejected the Communists’ claim and showed at the time that it was based on wrong theory and was incapable of succeeding. |
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