For all their careful and progressive verbiage, the new constitution, Code of Law and Revolutionary Tribunals were essentially fronts for state power wielded by violent men. Lenin, seldom a hypocrite, was honest enough to admit this. “The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”, he wrote in 1918, “is power unrestricted by any law”. In 1920 he was confident enough to elaborate and explain that “the scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else but this–power without limits, resting directly upon force, restrained by no law, absolutely unrestricted by rules”.11 This was both naïve and dangerous. Not only was the concept not remotely “scientific”, but its essence–power without limits, unrestricted by rules–was the perfect seedbed for Stalinism.
On 29th October the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railwaymen, known as the Vikzhel, offered to host talks to create what Rabinowitch described as “an all-inclusive, homogeneous socialist government from the Bolsheviks on the extreme left to the popular socialists on the right”.12 Vikzhel threatened to call a national strike unless the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks/SRs/Trudoviks halted what it called a “fratricidal war”. The majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee were keen to participate in these talks. With Lenin and Trotsky busy elsewhere the CC unanimously declared that it wished to broaden the composition of Sovnarcom to include all Soviet parties, and that Sovnarcom itself be answerable to the Central Executive of the All-Russia Soviet Congress. On that basis talks began immediately with the other socialist parties.
A wave of resolutions from factories and army units welcomed the Vikzhel initiative. Bolshevik sailors on the destroyer Oleg broadcast via ship’s radio their relief at the “glad tidings” of negotiations between “all socialist parties who are trying to form a bloc”.13 A resolution passed by a large majority at the Baltic Shipbuilding and Machine Works in Petrograd on 2nd November declared:
Seeing the full horror of civil war, we decisively and insistently demand the immediate cessation of this bloody nightmare and the creation of a unified socialist authority based on understanding and mutual concessions by all the socialist parties, from the comrade Bolsheviks to the popular socialists.
It demanded that such a coalition government should carry out four urgent tasks: 1) approval of the Decree on Land, 2) immediate proposal for a democratic peace to all warring countries, 3) control over production and distribution, and 4) the convocation of the Constituent Assembly as scheduled.14
The wishes of these workers were clear enough, but the very fact that talks were occurring, and at the behest of the militant trade union that had seen off Kornilov, gave hope to the Mensheviks and Right SRs who had walked out of the Second Congress that the Bolsheviks could not retain power. They therefore proposed a set of unrealistic demands: that a coalition be formed that excluded “the parties of privilege” (the Octobrists and Kadets) and the Bolsheviks, that the decisions of the Second Congress be declared null and void, and that attempts be made to negotiate a truce with Kerensky.
The hardline position of the Mensheviks and Trudoviks stemmed from their bruising experience at the Second Congress and the closure of their newspapers. Even Martov, desperate to reach an agreement between moderate Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and SRs, felt compelled to say clearly to the Bolshevik delegation that the Mensheviks could not agree with the latest Decree issued by the People’s Commissar for Justice. “We will not accept a decree which includes shootings and military revolutionary courts, i.e. executions without a trial”, he said. This condemnation of political terror was distributed as an official Vikzhel telegram to Petrograd workers.15
Kamenev, leading the Bolshevik negotiating team, replied that any socialist coalition government that excluded them would not have majority working-class support. This was true for the moment although Riazanov, chairman of the Petrograd Trade Union Council, sensed that despite temporary support for Bolshevik actions on 25th October many workers supported the Vikzhel initiative. He therefore tried to accommodate the Mensheviks. At the same time he voiced his fears that disarmament of MRC units–currently fighting Krasnov’s troops outside Petrograd–would lead to a slaughter of workers by the regular army. He did not need to push this further as the MRC’s defeat of Krasnov at Polkovo altered the mood of the Menshevik and SR leaderships. They were also coming under heavy pressure from their own factory branches demanding they shelve differences with the Bolsheviks and form a coalition. The next Menshevik proposal on 31st October therefore agreed to a coalition with the Bolsheviks although it insisted this not include Lenin or Trotsky.
The Bolshevik representatives did not object to the exclusion of Lenin and Trotsky, and the talks soon produced a draft “agreement”. Its terms were plain–that a socialist coalition be formed with Victor Chernov, the long-standing SR leader, as Prime Minister; that although Lenin and Trotsky were to be excluded from the government the Bolshevik Party would have four senior ministerial portfolios (Labour, Commerce & Industry, Education and Foreign Affairs); and that the government be accountable to a new body, the Provisional People’s Council, with representatives from the Petrograd and Moscow City Dumas, the Trade Union Council, and the first (pre-26th October) Soviet Executive.
With the prospect of a solid agreement on the left and the avoidance of inevitable civil war and famine, the Bolshevik negotiators provisionally agreed these terms, with one reservation. Kamenev insisted that the current Soviet Executive, elected on 26th October at the Second Congress, should be represented on the People’s Council as it had the better mandate. Although this element of the agreement was left undecided, Vikzhel officials publicly announced that a final agreement was imminent. The bulletin of the Petrograd Soviet, Rabochii I soldat, controlled by the Bolsheviks, wrote in its editorial of 1st November that “agreement among all factions at the talks has been reached based on the principle that the government shall be composed of all socialist parties in the Soviet”.16
This was premature. The Bolshevik Central Committee had not signed off on the agreement. On 1st November the CC met and an angry Lenin said he considered that Vikzhel was “on the side of the Kaledins and the Kornilovs”. Riazanov flatly disagreed. He argued that
Even in Petrograd, power is not in our hands but in the hands of the Soviet, and this has to be faced. If we abandon this course we will be utterly and hopelessly alone. We will be faced with the fact that we tricked the masses, having promised them a Soviet government.17
Viktor Nogin, chairman of the Moscow Soviet, predicted any attempt to go it alone would result in civil war and the dissolution of the Soviets. Anton Slutski, representing the hardline Petrograd Committee, insisted that “the question of the Soviets” had been decided and that the Bolsheviks should not consider “broadened Soviets of any kind”. Lenin demanded that the Bolsheviks immediately withdraw from the negotiations. Despite this, the CC voted 10-4 to carry on with the talks, but with new conditions.