The most dramatic manifestation of the refusal by Russia’s educated class to accept the October coup was the general strike of white-collar personnel (sluzhashchie). Although the Bolsheviks then and since have dismissed this action as “sabotage,” it was, in fact, a grandiose, non-violent act of protest by the nation’s civil servants and employees of private enterprises against the destruction of democracy.48 The strike, intended to demonstrate to the Bolsheviks their unpopularity and, at the same time, make it impossible for them to govern, broke out spontaneously. It quickly acquired an organizational structure, first in the shape of strike committees in the ministries, banks, and other public institutions and then in a coordinating body called the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution (Komitet Spaseniia Rodiny i Revoliutsii). The committee originally consisted of Municipal Duma officials, members of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets dissolved by the Bolsheviks, representatives of the All-Russian Congress of Peasant Soviets, the Union of Unions of Government Employees, and several clerical unions, including that of postal workers. Gradually, representatives of Russian socialist parties, the Left SRs excepted, also joined. The committee appealed to the nation not to cooperate with the usurpers and to fight for the restoration of democracy.49 On October 28 it called on the Bolsheviks to relinquish power.50
On October 29, the Union of Unions of Government Employees in Petrograd, in cooperation with the committee (which apparently financed the strike), asked its membership to stop work:
The committee of the Union of Unions of Government Employees at Petrograd, having discussed with the delegates of the central committees of the All-Russian Union of Government Employees the question of the usurpation of power by the Bolshevik group in the Petrograd Soviet a month before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and considering that this criminal act threatens the destruction of Russia and all the conquests of the Revolution, in accord with the Ail-Russian Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution … resolved that:
1. Work in all the administrative departments of the government shall cease immediately;
2. The questions of food supply for the army and the population, as well as the activity of the institutions concerned with the maintenance of public order, are to be decided by the Committee for the Salvation [of the Fatherland and the Revolution] in cooperation with the committees of the Union of Unions;
3. The action of the administrative departments which have already ceased their work is approved.51
The appeal was widely heeded: soon work in all the ministries in Petrograd ground to a halt. Except for porters and some secretarial staff, their personnel either failed to come to work or came and sat doing nothing. The freshly appointed Bolshevik commissars, having no place to go, hung around Lenin’s headquarters in Smolnyi, issuing orders to which no one paid attention. Access to the ministries was barred to them:
When, after the first October days, the People’s Commissars came to work in the former ministries, they found, along with mountains of papers and folders, only couriers, cleaning people, and doormen. All the officials, beginning with the directors and administrators and ending with typists and copiers, considered it their duty to refuse to recognize the commissars and to stay away from work.52
Trotsky had an embarrassing experience when on November 9—two weeks after receiving his appointment—he ventured to visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Yesterday, the new “minister,” Trotsky, came to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After calling together all the officials, he said: “I am the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trotsky.” He was greeted with ironic laughter. To this he paid no attention and told them to go back to their work. They went … but to their own homes, with the intention of not returning to [the] office as long as Trotsky remained head of the ministry.53
Shliapnikov, the Commissar of Labor, had a similar reception when he tried to take charge of his ministry.54 The Bolshevik Government thus found itself in the absurd situation of being unable, weeks after it had assumed authority, to persuade the country’s civil servants to work for it. It could hardly be said, therefore, to have functioned.
The strike spread to non-governmental institutions. Private banks had shut their doors as early as October 26–27. On November 1, the All-Russian Union of Postal and Telegraph Employees announced that unless the Bolshevik Government gave way to a coalition cabinet it would order its membership to stop work.55 Soon telegraph and telephone workers walked out in Petrograd, Moscow, and some provincial towns. On November 2, Petrograd’s pharmacists went on strike; on November 7, water transport workers followed suit as did schoolteachers. On November 8, the Union of Printers in Petrograd announced that if the Bolsheviks carried out their Press Decree they, too, would strike.
For the Bolsheviks, the most painful were work stoppages at the government’s fiscal institutions, the State Bank and the State Treasury. They could manage for the time being, without the ministries of Foreign Affairs or of Labor, but they had to have money. The bank and the Treasury refused to honor the Sovnarkom’s requests for funds, on the grounds that it was not a legitimate government: couriers sent by Smolnyi with drafts signed by People’s Commissars came back empty-handed. The staffs of the bank and the treasury recognized the old Provisional Government and paid only its representatives; they also honored requests from legitimate public authorities and the military. On November 4, in response to Bolshevik charges that its actions were causing hardship to the population, the State Bank declared that during the preceding week it had paid out 610 million rubles for the needs of the population and the armed forces; 40 million of that sum went to representatives of the old Provisional Government.56
On October 30, the Sovnarkom ordered all state and private banks to open for business the next day. Refusal to honor checks and drafts from government institutions, it warned, would lead to the arrest of the directors.57 Under this threat, some private banks reopened, but still none would cash checks issued by the Sovnarkom.
Desperate for money, the Bolsheviks resorted to harsher measures. On November 7, V. R. Menzhinskii, the new Commissar of Finance, appeared at the State Bank with armed sailors and a military band. He demanded 10 million rubles. The bank refused. He returned four days later with more troops and presented an ultimatum: unless money was forthcoming within twenty minutes, not only would the staff of the State Bank lose their jobs and pensions but those of military age would be drafted. The bank stood firm. The Sovnarkom dismissed some of the bank’s officials, but it still had no money, more than two weeks after assuming governmental responsibilities.
On November 14, the clerical personnel of Petrograd banks met to decide what to do next. Employees of the State Bank voted overwhelmingly to deny recognition to the Sovnarkom and go on with the strike. Clerks of private banks reached the same conclusion. The staff of the State Treasury voted 142–14 to refuse the Bolsheviks access to government funds: they also rejected a Sovnarkom request for a “short-term advance” of 25 million rubles.58