The Provisional Government now faced the classic predicament of moderate revolutionaries who take the reins of power from the fallen authority. “Little by little,” writes Crane Brinton in his comparative study of revolutions,
the moderates find themselves losing the credit they had gained as opponents of the old regime, and taking on more and more of the discredit associated by the hopeful with the status of heir of the old regime. Forced on the defensive, they make mistake after mistake, partly because they are so little used to being on the defensive.
Emotionally unable to bear thinking of themselves as “falling behind in the revolutionary process” and to break with rivals on the left, they satisfy no one and are ready to give way to better-organized, better-staffed, more determined rivals.79
In May and June 1917, the Bolshevik Party still ran a poor third to the other socialist parties: at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in early June, it had only 105 delegates as against 285 for the SRs and 248 for the Mensheviks.* But the tide was running in its favor.
The Bolsheviks enjoyed many advantages. In addition to their unique position as the sole alternative to the new Provisional Government and their determined and power-hungry leadership, there were at least two others.
The Mensheviks and SRs spouted socialist slogans, but they would not push them to their logical conclusions. This confused their constituency and helped the Bolsheviks. They insisted that since February 1917 Russia had a “bourgeois” regime which they controlled through the soviets: but if this was so, why not be rid of the “bourgeoisie” and vest full power in the soviets? The socialists called the war “imperialist”: if it was so, why not lay down arms and go home? “All Power to the Soviets” and “Down with the War,” though still unpopular slogans in the spring and summer of 1917, had about them a certain inexorable logic—they made “sense” in the context of ideas which the socialists planted in the mind of the population. Because the Bolsheviks had the courage to draw from the common socialist premises the obvious conclusions, the socialists could never really stand up to them: to have done so would have been tantamount to denying themselves. Time and again, whenever the followers of Lenin brazenly challenged democratic procedures and struck for power, the socialists would try to talk them out of it, yet, at the same time, they would prevent the government from reacting. It was difficult to stand up to the Bolsheviks if their only sin was seeking to reach the same goal by bolder means: in many ways, Lenin and his followers were the true “conscience of the Revolution.” Their intellectual irresponsibility combined with the moral cowardice of the socialist majority created a psychological and ideological environment in which the Bolshevik minority battened and grew.
But perhaps the single greatest advantage the Bolsheviks enjoyed over their rivals lay in their total unconcern for Russia. The conservatives, the liberals, and the socialists, each in their own way, sought to preserve Russia as a national entity, in defiance of the particular social and regional interests that the Revolution had unleashed and that were pulling the country apart. They appealed to the soldiers to maintain discipline, to the peasants to wait for the land reform, to the workers to keep up production, to the ethnic minorities to hold in abeyance demands for self-rule. These were unpopular appeals because the absence in the country of a strong sense of statehood and nationhood encouraged centrifugal tendencies and favored the advancement of special interests at the expense of the whole. The Bolsheviks, for whom Russia was no more than a springboard for a world revolution, had no such concerns. It suited them very well if spontaneous forces “smashed” existing institutions and destroyed Russia. For this reason, they encouraged to the fullest every destructive trend. And since these trends, once unleashed in February, were difficult to restrain in any event, they rode the crest of a swelling wave; by identifying themselves with the inevitable, they gained the appearance of being in control. Later on, when in power, they would in no time renege on all their promises and reconstruct the state in a more centralized, autocratic form than the country had ever known: but until then, their indifference to the fate of Russia proved for the Bolsheviks an immense, perhaps decisive asset.
The rapid disintegration of Russia from lack of firm leadership resulted in the weakening of all national institutions, including those run by the socialists, a process which gave the Bolsheviks an opportunity to outflank the Menshevik and SR leadership in the All-Russian Soviet and the major trade unions. Marc Ferro has noted that after the formation of the coalition government, the authority of the All-Russian Soviet in Petrograd declined while that of the regional soviets rose. A similar process occurred in the labor movement, where the national trade unions lost authority to local “Factory Committees.”80 The regional soviets and Factory Committees were managed by politically inexperienced individuals amenable to Bolshevik manipulation.
The Bolsheviks enjoyed little influence in the major national trade unions, which were dominated by the Mensheviks. But as transport and communications deteriorated, the large national unions, centered in Petrograd or Moscow, lost touch with their members, scattered over the vast country. The workers now tended to shift loyalties from the professional unions to the factories. This process occurred despite the immense growth of the national trade union membership in 1917. The worker organizations which enjoyed the most rapid rise in power and influence were the Factory Committees, or Fabzavkomy. These had come into existence at the beginning of the February Revolution in the state-owned defense plants, after the disappearance of their government-appointed managers. From there, they spread to privately owned enterprises. On March 10, the association of Petrograd industrialists agreed with the Ispolkom to introduce Factory Committees in all the plants in the capital.81 The following month, the Provisional Government gave them official recognition, authorizing Factory Committees to act as representatives of workers.82
Initially, the Fabzavkomy adopted a moderate stance, concentrating on increasing production and arbitrating industrial disputes. Then they radicalized. Unhappy over worsening inflation and shortages of fuel and raw materials which led to plant closures, they charged the employers with speculation, false bookkeeping, and resort to lockouts. Here and there, they chased away the proprietors and managers and attempted to run the factories on their own. Elsewhere, they demanded a stronger voice in the management. The Mensheviks viewed with disfavor these anarcho-syndicalist institutions and sought to integrate the Factory Committees into the national trade unions. But the trend ran in the opposite direction as the immediate, day-to-day concerns of the workers became increasingly more linked with fellow workers employed under the same roof than with their occupational counterparts elsewhere. The Bolsheviks found the Fabzavkomy an ideal device with which to neutralize Menshevik influence in the trade unions.83 Although they disapproved of the syndicalist idea of “workers’ control” and after seizing power would liquidate this institution, in the spring of 1917 it was in their interest to promote it. They helped form Factory Committees and organized them nationally. At the First Conference of Petrograd Factory Committees, which they convened on May 30, the Bolsheviks controlled at least two-thirds of the delegates. Their motion calling for workers to be given a decisive vote in factory management as well as access to the firms’ accounting books passed with an overwhelming majority.84 The Fabzavkomy were the first institution to fall under Bolshevik control.*