The final epitaph for the Soviets was delivered in Tambov, when after election to the city Soviet the Mensheviks and SRs held three-quarters of the seats and attempted to form a new Executive. As they sat in session armed Red Guards burst in and demanded they disperse. When asked what mandate they had to do so the commander pulled out his pistol and exclaimed, “This is my mandate!” The next day it attempted to convene again, only to be met by a proclamation from the Red Guards that read, “The Soviet is disbanded forever! The time has come to establish not the power of the Soviets but the dictatorship of the revolutionary parties”.34
The workers of Yaraslavl, Kostroma, Tambov, Komrov, Tula, Tver, Rostov-on-Don and many other towns and cities now knew how much the Bolsheviks valued their “self-activity”. As a result, many workers began to draw parallels between the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the similar dispersal of local Soviets that returned non-Bolshevik majorities. The Mensheviks secured these majorities not just in the Central Industrial Region but across the Black Earth Region (south of Moscow) and the Upper Volga and Urals Region. In the Lower Volga, Kuban and Don Regions the picture was more complex, with constantly shifting power struggles between Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs, Cossacks, anarchist bands and incipient “White” armies (i.e. real counter-revolutionaries, whom the Mensheviks, unlike some of the more protean and undisciplined SRs, refused on principle to work with no matter what the ostensible aim).
Examining the record of Soviet elections in the first half of 1918, one of the most authoritative historians of early Soviet Russia concludes that by June 1918 the Mensheviks could justly claim that “large numbers of the industrial working class were now behind them, and that but for systematic dispersal and packing of the Soviets, and the mass arrests at workers’ meetings and congresses, their party could eventually have won power by its policy of constitutional opposition”.35 This may have been true had constitutional opposition been allowed. But the chance to express genuine dissent that existed in the first half of 1918–when newspapers such as the Mensheviks’ Vperod and Maxim Gorky’s Novaya Zhihn were allowed to publish, and Mensheviks and SRs could sit on the Soviet CEC–was soon extinguished.
Martov, as a member of the CEC, attempted to use that platform to voice criticisms at its packed and rowdy sessions in the Hotel Metropole, until 14th June, 1918 when all Mensheviks and SRs were expelled from the Executive, reducing it to a one-party bloc. At the same time Vperod and Novyi luch, the last remnants of the Menshevik press, were closed down. It was not a coincidence that the Mensheviks were denied these platforms on the eve of both the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, at which they were expected to return a majority, and a planned general strike in Petrograd to protest government policies on the economy and the Soviets.
Petrograd was suffering terrible food shortages, made worse by the loss of Ukraine, which produced more than half of Russia’s grain. The mass demobilisation of the army had swamped towns and cities. This resulted in an unemployment rate of nearly 50% in the capital. Added to this was growing unhappiness with the administration of local and district Soviets, many of whose personnel were amateurs drawn from the Bolshevik Party with little idea how to run the municipal services required by a large metropolis. It did not help the Bolsheviks’ popularity that they chose this moment, March 1918, to transfer the central government to Moscow as German troops advanced on Petrograd. This conveyed the impression to Petrograd workers that they were being abandoned. They were thus receptive to the idea of the Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates from Petrograd Factories and Plants (EAD).
The EAD was an idea that emerged initially from Petrograd Mensheviks, although it was kept a non-party affair. The intention was to build “a new, representative movement from below, shedding formal party affiliations”.36 It had its first plenary meeting on 13th March, 1918, including delegates from fifteen metalworking plants, such as the Obukhov, Trebochnyi and Aleksandrovsk, whose workers had protested against the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. On 3rd April a second plenary was held that explicitly attacked the government for “assaulting the workers’ movement with Tsarist methods”. On 7th April the Menshevik Central Committee endorsed the EAD initiative and it began to attract support in the working-class Nevsky district, as well as in outlying towns.
Rabinowitch records that the majority of delegates to the EAD “represented a significant portion of Petrograd’s most important factories and plants”.37 Their political demands were not counter-revolutionary, on the contrary they wished to revitilise and renew the revolutionary spirit of February 1917 in which so many of them had taken part, specifically by reconvening the Constituent Assembly, a central demand of the Russian revolutionary left prior to October 1917. They also demanded an end to political persecution and reintroduction of press and civil liberties gained in February 1917 but lost after October 1917. In April an EAD delegation visited Moscow and was well received by Moscow workers.
Food shortages continued. When women in the Petrograd suburb of Kolpino protested outside the local Soviet about lack of food they were fired on by Red Guards. This led to riots and strikes. When the EAD returned to Moscow in June their reception was even stronger, with delegates from towns whose Soviets had been shut down, such as Tula and Briansk, sent to Moscow to offer support. At a session of 1st June the EAD issued an appeal to Petrograd workers “to prepare the working masses for a political strike against the present regime, which in the name of the working class shoots it, throws it into prison, strangles freedom of speech, of the press, of the unions, the right to strike and workers’ representation”.38 It set 2nd July as the date for the General Strike.
This was a clear challenge to Sovnarcom and the Bolshevik Party, who used elections to the Petrograd Soviet to reassert control and crush the EAD. The official result gave the Bolsheviks a 3:1 majority in the Soviet, although many analysts of the election, such as Rabinowitch and Rosenberg, consider the result to be questionable due to intimidation of Mensheviks and SRs, severe press restrictions and dubious electoral practices. Significantly, it was the largest industrial plants such as the Putilov and the Obukhov, the best organised and most difficult to manipulate, that returned Menshevik majorities. After this the Petrograd Soviet passed a resolution condemning the EAD as counter-revolutionary. All factories were informed that if they took part in the strike they would be immediately shut down. EAD premises were raided and its leaders arrested.39
On 28th June, a few days before the planned general strike, Sovnarcom passed the Decree on General Nationalisation. This nationalised all enterprises owned by joint-stock companies and partnerships with capital over one million rubles. The Decree opened with the statement: “To declare the following industrial and commercial enterprises situated in the territory of the Soviet Republic, with all their capital and properties in whatever form, the property of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic”. It covered the mining, textiles, metallurgical, electrical, timber, rubber, tobacco, glass and ceramics, leather and shoemaking, cement and pottery industries, along with lesser industries such as paper production with basic capital not less than 300,000 rubles, plus any remaining private local utilities and railways. Oversight and organisation fell to Vesenka. The Decree mandated that, “From the moment of the issue of this Decree, the Board members, Directors and other executives of nationalised enterprises are accountable to the Soviet Republic for their safety and normal operation”.40