Now, Izvestiia concluded, the soviets were being abandoned for permanent “stone structures,” such as the Municipal Councils, chosen on a more representative franchise.107
The growing disenchantment with the soviets and the absenteeism of their socialist rivals enabled the Bolsheviks to gain in them an influence out of proportion to their national following. As their role in the soviets grew, they reverted to the old slogan: “All Power to the Soviets.”
The Bolsheviks passed an important milestone on their march to power on September 25 when they won a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet. (They had gained such a majority in Moscow on September 19.) Trotsky, who assumed the chairmanship of the Petrograd Soviet, immediately proceeded to turn it into an instrument with which to secure control of the urban soviets in the rest of the country. In the words of Izvestiia, the instant the Bolsheviks acquired a majority in the Workers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet, they “transformed it into their party organization and, leaning on it, engaged in a partisan struggle to seize all the soviets nationwide.”108 They largely ignored the Ispolkom chosen by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which remained under SR and Menshevik control, and proceeded to create a parallel pseudo-national soviet organization of their own, representing only those soviets in which they enjoyed pluralities.
In the more favorable political environment created by the Kornilov Affair and their successes in the soviets, the Bolsheviks revived the question of a coup d’état. Opinion was divided. The July debacle fresh in mind, Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed further “adventurism.” Notwithstanding their growing strength in the soviets, they argued, the Bolsheviks remained a minority party, so that even if they managed to take power, they would soon lose it to the combined forces of the “bourgeois counterrevolution” and the peasantry. On the other extreme stood Lenin, the principal proponent of immediate and resolute action. The Kornilov incident convinced him that the chances of a successful coup were better than ever and perhaps unrepeatable. On September 12 and 14 he wrote from Finland two letters to the Central Committee, called “The Bolsheviks Must Take Power” and “Marxism and Insurrection.”109 “With a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies in both capital cities,” he wrote in the first, “the Bolsheviks can and must seize power.” Contrary to Kamenev and Zinoviev, the Bolsheviks not only could seize power but hold on to it: by proposing an immediate peace and giving land to the peasants, “the Bolsheviks can establish a government that no one will overthrow.” It was essential, however, to move swiftly because the Provisional Government might turn Petrograd over to the Germans or else the war could end. The “order of the day” was
armed insurrection in Petrograd and Moscow (plus their regions), the conquest of power, the overthrow of the government. We must consider how to agitate for this, without so expressing ourselves in print.
Once power had been taken in Petrograd and Moscow, the issue would be settled. Lenin dismissed as “naïve” the advice of Kamenev and Zinoviev that the party should await the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets in the hope of obtaining a majority: “no revolution waits for that”
In the second letter, Lenin dealt with the accusation that taking power by armed force was not “Marxism” but “Blanquism” and disposed of analogies with July: the “objective” situation in September was entirely different. He felt certain (possibly from information supplied by his German contacts) that Berlin would offer the Bolshevik government an armistice. “And to secure an armistice means to conquer the whole world.”110
The Central Committee took up Lenin’s letters on September 15. The laconic and almost certainly heavily censored protocols of this meeting* indicate that while Lenin’s associates hesitated to reject formally his advice (as Kamenev urged them to do), neither were they prepared to follow it: according to Trotsky, in September no one agreed with Lenin on the desirability of an immediate insurrection.111 On Stalin’s motion, Lenin’s letters were circulated to the party’s major regional organizations, which was a way of avoiding action. Here the matter rested: at none of the six sessions that followed (September 20-October 5) was Lenin’s proposal referred to.†
Such passivity infuriated Lenin: he feared that the favorable moment for an insurrection would pass. On September 24 or 25, he moved from Helsinki to Vyborg (still in Finnish territory) to be nearer the scene of action. From there, on September 29, he dispatched a third letter to the Central Committee, under the title “The Crisis Has Ripened.” His principal operative recommendations were contained in the sixth part of the letter, first made public in 1925. It had to be frankly conceded, Lenin wrote, that some party members wanted to postpone the power seizure until the next Congress of Soviets. He totally rejected this approach: “To pass up such a moment and ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets is complete idiocy or complete treason”:
The Bolsheviks are now guaranteed the success of the uprising: (1) we can (if we do not ‘await’ the Congress of Soviets) strike suddenly from three points: Petersburg, Moscow, and the Baltic Fleet … (5) we have the technical capability to take power in Moscow (which could even begin so as to paralyze the enemy with its suddenness); (6) we have thousands of armed workers and soldiers who can at once seize the Winter Palace and the General Staff, the telephone station and all the major printing plants.… If we were to strike at once, suddenly, from three points—Petersburg, Moscow, the Baltic Fleet—then the chances are 99 percent that we will win with fewer losses than we suffered on July 3–5, because the troops will not move against a government of peace.*
In view of the fact that the Central Committee did not answer his “entreaties” and even censored his articles, Lenin submitted his resignation. This, of course, was bluff. To discuss their differences, the Central Committee requested Lenin to return to Petrograd.112
Lenin’s associates to a man rejected his demand for an immediate armed uprising, preferring a slower, safer course. Their tactics were formulated by Trotsky, who thought Lenin’s proposals too “impetuous.” Trotsky wanted the armed uprising disguised as the assumption of power by an All-Russian Congress of Soviets—not, however, one properly convened, which would certainly refuse to do so, but one which the Bolsheviks would convene on their own initiative in defiance of established procedures, and pack with followers: a congress of pro-Bolshevik soviets camouflaged as a national congress. Seen in retrospect, this undoubtedly was the correct course to follow because the country would not have tolerated the overt assumption of power by a single party, as Lenin advocated. To succeed beyond the initial days, the coup had to be given some sort of “soviet” legitimacy, even if a spurious one.
Lenin’s sense of urgency was in good measure inspired by the fear of being preempted by the Constituent Assembly. On August 9, the Provisional Government finally announced a schedule for that body: elections on November 12 and the opening session on November 28. Although on some days the Bolsheviks deluded themselves that they could win a majority of the seats in the Assembly, in their hearts they knew they had no chance given that the peasants were certain to vote solidly for the Socialists-Revolutionaries. Since Bolshevik strength lay in the cities and in the army, and they alone had soviet organizations, the Bolsheviks’ only hope of claiming a national mandate was through the soviets. Otherwise, all was lost. Once the country made known its will through a democratic election, they could no longer claim that they spoke for the “people” and that the new government was “capitalist.” If they were to take power, therefore, they had to do so before the elections to the Assembly. Once they were in control, the adverse results of the elections could be neutralized: as a Bolshevik publication put it, the composition of the Assembly “will strongly depend on who convenes it.”113 Lenin concurred: the “success” of the elections to the Assembly would be best assured after the coup.114 As events were to show, this meant that the Bolsheviks would either tamper with the electoral results or else disperse the Assembly. This was for Lenin a weighty reason to hurry his colleagues, to the point of threatening resignation.