Lenin reacted as he always did when a democratic decision went against him. He immediately rejected it. Earlier in the day, at a stormy meeting of the Petrograd District Committee, he told those who argued for acceptance of the Vikzhel proposals, “If you get the majority, take power in the Central Executive Committee and carry on. But we will go the sailors”. By this he seemed to threaten that if the Bolshevik CC accepted the proposal and worked with the Soviet Executive, installed at the Second Congress after 25th October to create a socialist coalition government, he would ignore that decision and ask the Kronstadt sailors to overthrow the Soviet as well. But the Kronstadt sailors had supported the October Insurrection because it was an uprising in support of Soviet power. The policy of the Kronstadt Soviet was for a Sovietbased government of all the socialist parties, i.e. the kind of government suggested by Vikzhel and Martov. If Lenin had “gone to the sailors” and asked for their support for an exclusively Bolshevik government, he would have failed.
He never had to take that risk because he ensured the CC added pre-conditions to any final agreement which were sure to be unacceptable to the Mensheviks and SRs. On 1st November, the Soviet Central Executive debated the Vikzhel proposals. The Vikzhel spokesman Krushinsky began by asserting, “It is absolutely vital for all the socialist parties to agree on forming a homogeneous socialist administration”. Boris Kamkov, a Left SR, said that his party stood for a “homogenous revolutionary democratic government”. With counter-revolutionaries at the gates of Petrograd, “the socialist parties should set aside partisan calculation and close ranks to form a single progressive front”. The Left SRs held to their view that “the Soviets are the pivot around which revolutionary democracy can unite”.
The Bolshevik delegate Mikhail Volodarsky responded that they could not conclude an agreement “at any price”. He outlined the Bolshevik position in a resolution that demanded 1) the Decrees on peace, land and workers’control must be accepted before any coalition government be formed; 2) there must be a “merciless struggle” against counter-revolution; 3) recognition of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the sole source of authority; 4) any new government to be responsible to the CEC; 5) no organisation to be represented in the CEC not present in the Soviets; and 6) the CEC be expanded to include Soviets not currently represented. The Menshevik-Internationalists and Polish Socialists claimed the Bolshevik resolution was a “bolt from the blue” which prevented reaching agreement. In the heat of the debate nobody remarked that the Bolshevik resolution contradicted itself–that it demanded the Second Congress be the “sole authority” and that the government answer to the CEC while at the same time laying down conditions to the CEC to which it had to agree.18
Within the Bolshevik Party, where the real decisions were being made, Lenin called upon the activists of the Petrograd Committee to exert pressure on “the Muscovites” Rykov and Nogin, who stood for a socialist coalition. A stream of resolutions and messages then began to arrive from Petrograd Bolsheviks demanding no concessions be made in the negotiations. Faced with this onslaught, some CC moderates backtracked and agreed that Kamenev had exceeded his remit. The CC decided that whilst the Bolshevik team would return to the talks it would do so only to issue an ultimatum to the other participants.
At the CEC session of 2nd November, the Left SR Boris Malkin fiercely condemned the Bolshevik position. He told the CEC,
the tactics adopted by the Bolshevik Party now in power are leading irrevocably to a schism among the toiling masses; that the dictatorship of a single political group, which it has in effect established, will with inevitable logic bring about severe repression, not only of members of the propertied classes, but also of the masses; that such a policy has already been put into practice by the Council of People’s Commissars and other executive bodies, in regard to the press as well as various individuals and organizations; that this policy is inexorably leading to the ruin of the revolution.
He ended with a warning that the Bolsheviks’ intransigent position on reaching an agreement “is plunging the country into the abyss of civil war”.19
After hearing out Malkin’s attack, Kamenev repeated the Bolshevik resolution of the previous day. He told the CEC that a socialist coalition government, of whatever complexion, must implement the Decrees on land, peace, workers’control and nationalities passed at the Second Congress of Soviets; that it must be beholden not to a new People’s Council but to the current Soviet Executive; and both Lenin and Trotsky must have positions in the new government. Despite Malkin’s assault on the Bolsheviks, other Left SRs were tempted to back the Bolshevik majority on the CEC, especially as the Bolshevik position quite clearly stated that Sovnarcom was answerable to the CEC. Proshyan of the Left SRs undercut Malkin completely by suggesting that the Left SRs could support the Bolsheviks as long as a Left SR got to head the Ministry of Agriculture. The majority on the CEC shifted away from its initial rejection of the Bolshevikposition to acceptance.
The CEC was for the moment convinced, but when Riazanov put the Bolshevik CC’s new terms to the other Vikzhel negotiators on 3rd November, they came as an unpleasant shock. The Left SRs/Left Mensheviks wanted to accept them but the majority did not. They regarded Sovnarcom’s Decrees–and Sovnarcom itself–as arising from a violent act that had no legitimacy. Whilst this was technically true, it was woefully out of touch with reality. Martov knew the Bolsheviks had to be accommodated if any coalition would work, but the majority of the Mensheviks, the Right SRs and the Bundists–sharing the widespread belief that the Bolsheviks could not retain power for more than a few weeks–rejected the conditions. They blamed the Bolsheviks and the Bolshevik-led CEC for altering the terms of the initial agreement. The talks were not abandoned, but in all essentials they had ceased. The Bolshevik “moderates”–Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Nogin and Miliutin, though not Lunacharsky–resigned from the CC in protest.
The collapse of the only attempt to form a broad socialist coalition after the October Insurrection, and the general impression amongst the militant working class that it resulted from the refusal of the non-Bolshevik socialists to compromise and not from Lenin’s adamant rejection of the idea, gave to Bolsheviks still fighting in other cities added self-confidence and energy. By 3rd November Bolshevik forces had secured Moscow and the sinews of a new regime were beginning to take shape. Its initial Decrees were popular. Sovnarcom, as the face of the new regime, could have exploited that popularity and used it to build a popular socialist consensus amongst the majority of Russian people. Its opponents were in total disarray and commanded little support. Despite resistance to its rule from the remnants of Kerensky’s forces and armed rebellion in the Don Region, there was no need to restrict civil rights and freedom of the press. Yet within days of 25th October the new regime had already closed most of Russia’s newspapers.
On 29th October, Sovnarcom issued a Decree restricting freedom of the press. The clampdown began immediately. The legendary SR leader Catherine Breshkovsky’s Volia Naroda was shut down, with the editor and founder of the SR party Andrey Argunov imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. So too was the social-democratic Yednistvo, edited by the “Father of Russian Marxism” George Plekhanov. The printing presses of Russkaya Volia, edited by the novelist and playwright Leonard Andreyev (supportive of the February Revolution but critical of the Bolsheviks) were immediately confiscated. Although the official SR journal Dyelo Narodo was banned, militant soldiers sympathetic to the SRs guarded its premises and for a while it was produced illegally.