The Bolsheviks had no hope of manipulating the Constituent Assembly into conceding them power, but they could conceivably use for this purpose the soviets, institutions that were irregularly elected, loosely structured, and without peasant representation. With this in mind, they began to agitate for the prompt convocation of a Second Congress of Soviets. They had a case. Since the First Congress in June, the situation in Russia had changed and so had the membership of the urban soviets. The SRs and Mensheviks were none too enthusiastic about another Congress, in part because they feared it would have a sizable Bolshevik contingent, and in part because it would interfere with the Constituent Assembly. The regional soviets and the armed forces were negative as well. At the end of September, the Ispolkom sent out questionnaires to 169 soviets and army committees, requesting their opinion on whether to convene a Second Congress of Soviets: of the sixty-three soviets that responded, only eight favored the idea.115 The sentiment among the troops was even more negative: on October 1, the Soldiers’ Section of the Petrograd Soviet voted against holding a national Congress of Soviets, and a report presented to it in mid-October indicated that the representatives of army committees had agreed unanimously that such a congress would be “premature” and would subvert the Constituent Assembly.116
But the Bolsheviks, enjoying preponderance in the Petrograd Soviet, kept up the pressure, and on September 26 the Bureau of the Ispolkom agreed to the convocation of a Second Congress of Soviets on October 20.117 The agenda of this congress was to be strictly limited to drafting legislative proposals for submission to the Constituent Assembly. Instructions were issued to the interurban department of the Soviet to invite the regional soviets to send representatives.
The Bolsheviks thus won a victory, but it was only a first step. Although their position in the country’s soviets was much stronger than it had been in June, it was unlikely that they would gain at the Second Congress an absolute majority.118 This they could secure only by taking the convocation of the Second Congress into their own hands and inviting to it only those soviets, located mostly in central and northern Russia, and those army committees in which they had assured majorities. This they now proceeded to do.
On September 10, there opened in Helsinki the Third Regional Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets of Finland. Here the Bolsheviks enjoyed a solid majority.119 The congress set up a Regional Committee which instructed civilian and military personnel in Finland to obey only those laws of the Provisional Government to which it gave assent.120 The move was intended to delegitimize the Provisional Government through the agency of a pseudo-governmental center, run by the Bolsheviks.
Their success in Finland persuaded the Bolsheviks that they could use the same device to convene an equally compliant All-Russian Congress of Soviets. On September 29, the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed and on October 5 resolved to hold in Petrograd a Northern Regional Congress of Soviets.121 Invitations were sent out in the name of an ephemeral Bolshevik front calling itself the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy, and Workers of Finland. The Bureau of the Ispolkom protested that the meeting was convened in an irregular manner.122 Ignoring it, the Regional Committee proceeded to invite some thirty soviets in which the Bolsheviks had majorities to send representatives; among them were soviets of the Moscow province, which did not even belong to the Northern Region.123 There exist strong indications that some Bolshevik leaders, Lenin among them, considered having this Regional Congress proclaim the passage of power to the soviets,124 but the plan was given up.
The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region opened in Petrograd on October 11. It was completely dominated by the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left SRs, a splinter group of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. This rump “congress” heard all kinds of inflammatory speeches, including one by Trotsky, who declared that the “time for words” had passed.125
The Bolshevik Party, of course, had no more authority than any other group to convene congresses of soviets, whether regional or national, and the Ispolkom declared the meeting a “private gathering” of individual soviets, devoid of official standing.126 The Bolsheviks ignored this declaration. They regarded their body as the immediate forerunner of the Second Congress of Soviets, which they were determined to convene on October 20—according to Trotsky, by legal means if possible and by “revolutionary” ones if not.127 The most important result of the Regional Congress was the formation of a “Northern Regional Committee,” composed of eleven Bolsheviks and six Left SRs, whose task it was to “ensure” the convocation of a Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets.128 On October 16 this body sent telegrams to the soviets, as well as to military committees at the regimental, divisional, and corps level, informing them that the Second Congress would meet in Petrograd on October 20 and requesting them to send delegates. The congress was to obtain an armistice, distribute land to peasants, and ensure that the Constituent Assembly met as scheduled. The telegrams instructed all soviets and army committees opposed to the convocation of the Second Congress—and these, as is known from the Ispolkom’s survey, were the large majority—to be at once “reelected,” which was a Bolshevik code word for dissolved.129
This Bolshevik move constituted a veritable coup d’état against the national organization of the soviets: it was the opening phase of the power seizure. With these measures, the Bolshevik Central Committee arrogated to itself the authority which the First Congress of Soviets had entrusted to the Ispolkom. It also preempted the Provisional Government, for the agenda which the Bolsheviks set for the so-called Second Congress was to be at the center of the government’s activities until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.130
The Mensheviks and SRs, well aware what the Bolsheviks were up to, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Second Congress. On October 19, Izvestiia carried a statement by the Ispolkom which reasserted that only its Bureau had the authority to convene a national Congress of Soviets:
No other committee has the authority or the right to take upon itself the initiative in convening this congress. The less does this right belong to the Northern Regional Congress, brought together in violation of all the rules established for the regional soviets and representing soviets chosen arbitrarily and at random.
The Bureau went on to say that the Bolshevik invitation to regimental, divisional, and corps committees violated established procedures for military representation, which called for delegates to be chosen by army assemblies and, when these could not be convened, by army committees on the basis of one delegate for 25,000 soldiers.131 The Bolshevik organizers obviously bypassed the army committees because of their known opposition to the Second Congress.132 Three days later Izvestiia pointed out that the Bolsheviks not only convened an illegal Congress, but flagrantly violated accepted norms of representation. While the electoral rules called for soviets representing fewer than 25,000 persons to send no delegates to the All-Russian Congress, and those representing between 25,000 and 50,000 to send two, the Bolsheviks invited one soviet with 500 members to send two delegates and another with 1,500 to send five, which was more than was allocated to Kiev.133