Individual Contributions by Non-Bolsheviks That Aided the Bolshevik Cause
August 10, 2001 — History 55 — Dartmouth College
An eternal question arises when analyzing the people and events of human history: Do great men make great events, or do great events make great men?
Individual actors were crucial in October 1917 Russia. During the spring and summer of 1917, the political aspirations, ideologies and personalities of key individuals changed the course of 20th century history by making the events of October possible. Individuals across the entire political spectrum, through their successes and failures, transformed the moderate — yet by no means insignificant — February Revolution into a radical one.
If October was the result of choices made by individuals, February’s successful upheaval and consequent failure were both the results of poor institutional tradition and violent worldwide events. The abdication of Tsar Nicholas II was a result of World War I’s stagnation and the autocratic traditions of Tsarist rule. The post-February 1917 leadership of Russia made up of the Duma’s executive committee and the executive committee of the Soviet Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was not adequate — even in its temporary position.
First, the balance of dual-power was impractical. The Provisional Government wanted to take power and make decisions but could not do so because the true power rested with the Soviet which only wanted to be the protector of the people from the possible capitalist motives of the progressive middle class government. Secondly, both institutions wanted to continue the war, but were divided over what Russia’s war aims should be; however, as the Bolsheviks would demonstrate, the root cause of the Tsar’s abdication was not the actual mutiny of Petrograd garrison but was the war that had cause the aging peasant troops to be drafted in the first place. Thirdly, there was no democratic tradition in Russia society. The absence of a civil society and the centuries long history of centralized autocratic control left the masses without direction and without a tolerance for compromise.
Key leaders in the Workers and Soldiers’ Soviet and the Provisional Government failed to deal with these inadequacies because their personalities, political aspirations and ideologies prevented them. The Provisional Government and the Soviet had different war goals, visions for Russia’s future, and suffered major institutional differences regarding each group’s legitimacy, power, intentions, and support. The leaders of the Bolshevik party were able to capitalize on these problems and bring the revolution much farther to the left because they did not suffer from such fragmentation.
The leader of the Bolshevik party Vladimir Illich Lenin, clearly the political master behind the October Revolution, was not alone in causing the events of October. Aside from trusted and able colleagues in Lenin’s own party such as Leon Trotsky, Alexander Kérensky was as much at fault for the October Revolution as the Bolshevik leadership was responsible for its success. Kérensky was a Duma member and the most active member of the post-February Russian government institutions because he held positions on both the Soviets’ executive committee and the Provisional Government’s cabinet. In A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, historian Richard Pipes states that Kérensky lacked a clear political direction, but capitalized on his public speaking ability in order to quench his desire for political power (85). His inability to clearly set goals and make decisions is an example of how inept the dual-power system was.
The February Revolution destroyed the entire administration of the Russian state, but did little to replace it. Within days of the Tsar’s abdication, the police and gubernatorial offices of regional and local governments were replaced with citizen boards that had no governmental experience. The Provisional Government stalled on important decisions out a fear that the Soviet would try to seize power while the Soviet feared its own illegitimacy and tried to only advise and give consent instead of directly rule; thereby avoiding responsibility.
Crane Brinton claims in The Theory of Deepening Revolution that revolutionaries are not given enough credit and that historians over emphasize the naivete of revolutionaries. However, he recognizes that revolutionaries are better at leadership in volatile situations (Medlin 100). This ability to lead under stress is understandable because the revolutionaries and their potential followers can rally behind the common goal of over throwing the government. Pipes, however, shows that in calm situations — such as a post-revolutionary situation — leadership falters and, in the case of Russia, left inexperienced people at the helm (93). The Provisional Government tried to govern by enacting new policies, but failed to create structures to enforce them. This had the effect of stalling true reform.
Order No. 1 released by the Soviet is a prime example of the revolutionaries’ attempts at broad reform without legitimate force behind it. Order No. 1 destroyed the Tsar’s bureaucracy and therefore gave the Provisional Government no way to enforce the laws it was making. This achieved the Soviet’s goal of making sure that it kept the revolution going and did not allow the conservatives in the Provisional Government to halt the revolution at the capitalist stage. If the Provisional Government was able to halt the revolution, Social Democracy would not be possible and imperialism would prevail. From the perspective of the right, Order No. 1 hurt the ability of Russia to adequately fight the War because it gave too much power to Soldiers’ committees. Later the Soviet mandated that all decisions made in the military be approved by the Soviet.
As the events in late spring and summer show, divisions about the war was the most explosive issue in early post-Tsarist Russia. Certain individuals, fuelled by patriotism and ambition, helped to ignite the explosion. Actions by Kérensky and the leader of the Kadet party Paul N. Miliukov with regard to the war helped to make Russians more and more dissatisfied with it and therefore dissatisfied with any group that supported it. Miliukov alienated the masses from his camp with his imperialist goals for the war, while Kerensky helped the Bolshevik cause twice during the summer. First there was the failed summer offensive, which then lead to the Kornilov affair. Personality, ambition and ideology played a role in the way that both men acted in regard to the war and therefore attributed to the Bolshevik success in October.
In April 1917, the Provisional Government and the Soviet told the Russian people and the Allies that Russia had no imperialist aims for the war. According to John M. Thompson’s Revolutionary Russia, 1917, Miliukov, then the Provisional Government’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, believed deeply that Russia should continue its imperialist ambitions for the war and that central to those goals was that Russia be given the Turkish Straits after the war’s end (61). He attached a personal letter to the Provisional Government and Soviet’s agreement in which he claimed that the Russian people were supportive of peace, but “would ‘fully observe the obligations that were undertaken in regard to our Allies’ — which, of course, for Miliukov included the secret treaties and the promise to Russia of the Turkish Straits” (Thompson 62). The Russian workers and soldiers took to the streets in response to Miliukov’s declaration and the Provisional Government was quickly thrust into a perilous position. The Soviet was able to keep the unrest from destroying the government because the Mensheviks reluctantly joined the Provisional Government in order to keep the government intact. Thompson is correct when he calls the Menshevik move to join the Provisional Government “fatal” (63) because it showed the fragmentation of socialist ideologies.
The May unrest was the result of one man and the first step toward Bolshevik triumph because the Mensheviks were now to be identified with an institution that had imperialist sympathizers like Miliukov in its ranks. Miliukov resigned, but the image of the Provisional Government was tarnished and the inability of the Russian leadership to compromise was revealed. These two facts and the Menshevik move to save the government show how ideology, personality, and political ambition contributed to the actions of individuals and institutions in Revolutionary Russia. Like many Russians of the intelligentsia and aristocracy, Miliukov was stubborn in his beliefs and would choose independence, and therefore defeat, rather than compromise. Miliukov accidentally changed the course of the revolution. His patriotic imperialist ideology and unwavering personality traits gave him the independence to demand that his personal views be added as an addendum to the government’s agenda.
As an institution, the political ambition of the Menshevik party kept it from keeping firm on its original policy of avoiding any alliance with the Provisional Government. Thompson asserts that “it seemed like treason to join the bourgeois in ruling the county,” but that the Mensheviks went ahead anyway because “socialists had an obligation to push [the bourgeois-democratic phase of] revolution forward rapidly and to ensure that it was as democratic and free as possible” (63). Political ambition to have more power — and therefore control the direction of the revolution — caused the Mensheviks to react in the way they did.
A further significant consequence of Muliukov’s resignation and the Menshevik policy shift was that Kérensky became more powerful in the Provisional Government. He moved from the top post at the Ministry of Justice to the critical position as Minister of War. As the Minister of War he over saw the failed June offensive. Pipes contends that Kérensky wanted the Russian people to support the war and saw a successful offensive — such as the one by the French after their revolution — as a means to improve public opinion regarding the war (123).
The offensive and its failure highlighted the problems with Order No. 1, prompted Kérensky to made the mistake of appointing a new officer to lead the army, and gave the Bolsheviks an opportunity to try for power. Even though he is quoted by Pipes for acknowledging that the Revolution had weakened the resolve of an army with deteriorating discipline, Kérensky still thought an offensive would be successful. Order No. 1 had made tactical leadership of units in the army difficult because it put power in the hands of the soldiers and illegitimated the authority of officers. Kérensky and the other politicians of the Provisional Government failed to recognize the problems.
After the offensive and the Bolshevik-led protests, Kérensky sought the help of General Lavr Kornilov making him Commander and Chief of the Army. It was obvious after the June offensive that Kornilov’s task was to make the army a better fighting force and so he demanded that Order No. 1 be repealled. The Provisional Government rejected his requests, even after Kérensky told him they would be met. Kérensky’s disecptive treatment of Kornilo would cause turmoil in the weeks to come because he alienated his leading general.
Furthermore, the failure of the offensive created troop shortages at the front and the Provision Government ordered the Petrograd troops to the front even though they had been exempted from service their because of their revolutionary contributions. Upon learning this, the Bolsheviks tried to manipulate the situation so that they could control protests, but Lenin backed down (Pipes 127). The protest failed because troops no longer supported the Bolsheviks after the Provisional Government released information on how the Germans were supporting Lenin.
The most important product of the July offensive was unquestionably the appointment of Konilov and his frustration with the Provisional Government after they failed to change their policies regarding order No. 1. Kérensky and Konilov quickly began to distrust each other. Vladimir Lvov a former member of the Provisional Government used this mutual distrust to try and start a moderate counterrevolution. According to Pipes he was a “central figure” (132). Lvov impersonated Kérensky when negotiating with Kornilov and impersonated Kornilov when negotiating with Kérensky. He made Kornilov believe that Kerensky offered him dictatorial powers, and Kérensky was tricked into believing that Kornilov was planning a conservative counterrevolution. This resulted in Kérensky further distancing himself from the military who did not appreciate that he had wrongly accused their popular leading general of mutiny.
Kérensky’s political ambition clouded his judgement and hurt the legitimacy of the Provisional Government. In Human Will, Not Inevitability, Made November, Kérensky places the blame on Kornilov (Medlin 150). Pipes, however, describes the events as a Kérensky attempt to “discredit the commanding general as the ringleader of an imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a position of unrivaled popularity” (134–135). If Pipes is correct, even further blame for the Bolshevik success should lay on Kérensky’s shoulders because even he himself describes the Kornilov Affair as an effect that “marks a decisive turning point in Russian life after the revolution; with it begins the third stage of the March Revolution” (Medlin 150).
Before the February Revolution, Lenin had been living in exile in Switzerland. While World War I raged in the countries around him, Lenin was surrounded by belligerent powers. In order to leave Switzerland to return to a post-Tsarist Russia he had to enlist the help of Germany who, like Lenin, had an interest in the Bolsheviks coming to power. The Bolshevik platform called for an end of the war among nations and an anti-imperialist class war to emerge. The Bolshevik party needed economic backing and the German Government provided the much need funds because Bolshevik activity inside Russia destabilized the government and decreased the Russian military’s ability to threaten Germany; thereby, allowing her to concentrated on the Western front.
Lenin’s personality, political ambition, ideology allowed him to treasonously exchange information fir money to support his cause. He believed that his mission was to create a world wide class struggle and that the key was to transform the Great War into a class war originating in Russia. Ideology, Political ambition and his personality allowed him to turn his back on his countrymen at the front because for him politics its self was war. According to Pipes, since he treated politics like war he was willing to make compromises in ideology as long as they were temporary and for “tactical purposes” (104).
Ideology was never as important as political ambition for Kérensky, but for Lenin, ideology was the most important aspect of his political life. Without a doubt that ideology was responsible for the Revolution, but Kérensky, Miluikov, Kornilov, and Lvov all played roles as individuals that cannot be forgotten. The evidence of Lenin’s accomplishments need not be repeated. Instead it is important to recognize that a few of the crucial successes for his party were largely due to mistakes of others. The Bolshevik policy to not join the Mensheviks in the Provisional Government was a tactful Leninist move by the Bolsheviks as it was a Menshevik miscalculation. After they took power, Bolshviks had to luxury to destroy their oppostion because their opposition could be false accusssed of being “counterrevolutionary,” while the Provisional Government had to respect the rights of others and maintain the democratic system. The mistakes made by individuals and institutions were a product of men who were searching for a utopia that does not to exist. They each helped shape the significant events around them and for that they are great men.
Works Cited
Brinton, Crane. “The Theory of Deepening Revolution.” In The Russian Revolution: Democracy or Deference. Ed. Virgil D. Medlin. Malabar, Florida: Robert F. Krieger Publishing Co., 1979. (99–109).
Kérensky, Alexander F. “ Human Will, Not Inevitabilty, Made November.” In The Russian Revolution: Democracy or Deference. Ed. Virgil D. Medlin. Malabar, Florida: Robert F. Krieger Publishing Co., 1979. (147–155).
Pipes, Richard. A Consice History of the Russian Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Thompson, John M. Revolutionary Russian, 1917. Prospect Heights, Illinois, Waveland Press,1989.
