To relieve the Sovnarkom of the many trivial issues that threatened to overburden its agenda, a Small Sovnarkom was created on December 18, 1917.
Government decisions became law when signed by Lenin and usually co-signed by one of the commissars, and then published in the official Gazette, the first issue of which appeared on October 28. It then acquired the status of a “decree” (dekret). Orders issued by the commissars on their own initiative were usually called “resolutions” (postanovleniia). Theory, however, was not always observed in practice. On certain occasions—this happened especially with laws sure to be unpopular—Lenin preferred that decrees be issued by the CEC and signed by its chairman, Sverdlov: this procedure had the effect of shifting the blame from the Bolsheviks onto the soviets. Some important laws were never published—such as the one creating the Cheka. Other measures—for instance, the introduction of the practice of taking hostages (September 1918)—came out in the name of the Commissar of Internal Affairs: it was published in Izvestiia, but is not included in the corpus of Soviet laws and decrees. Before long, the Bolsheviks reverted to the tsarist practice of legislating by means of secret circulars, which were not published at the time and many of which remain unpublished to this day: as under the old regime, the government resorted to this practice in matters involving state security.
In the first months of Bolshevik rule, decrees were issued not so much for their practical effect as for purposes of propaganda.67 Without means to enforce his laws, and uncertain how long his regime would survive, Lenin thought of them as models from which future generations could learn how to make revolution. Since they were not expected to be implemented, the early decrees were exhortative in tone and careless in phrasing. Lenin gave this matter serious attention only three months after coming to power: on January 30, 1918, he ordered that legislative drafts be submitted for review to the Commissariat of Justice, which had trained jurists.68 Laws issued from the spring of 1918 onward became so convoluted it is obvious they were not only reviewed but drafted by experienced bureaucrats of the old regime, who now entered Soviet service in large numbers.
It will be recalled (this page, above) that to appease critics on the Central Committee, Lenin and Trotsky agreed to continue negotiating with the Left SRs on their entry into the government, and to make one more effort to come to terms with the Mensheviks and SRs. The latter objective they never seriously pursued; Lenin had no desire to admit his socialist rivals into partnership. But he did want to bring in the Left SRs. He knew them for what they were: a loosely knit band of revolutionary hotheads, drunk on words, incapable of concerted action because of their faith in mass “spontaneity.” They were no threat, but they had their uses. Their presence in the cabinet would disarm the charge that the Bolsheviks monopolized the government: it would prove that any party prepared to “accept October”—the Bolshevik coup—was welcome. Still more valuable was the ability of the Left SRs to provide the Bolsheviks entry to the peasantry, with whose organizations they had no contact. Since it was absurd to pretend to the status of a government of “workers and peasants” without any peasant representatives, the Left SR access to the peasantry was a considerable asset. Lenin had great hopes (unrealistic, as events were to show) that the Left SRs would split the peasant vote for the Constituent Assembly and possibly give the Bolsheviks and their allies a majority.
The two parties negotiated in secret. On November 18, Izvestiia announced—prematurely, it turned out—that agreement had been reached with the Left SRs on their entry into the Sovnarkom. But the talks went on for three more weeks, in the course of which the two parties established a close working relationship. The Left SRs now joined forces with the Bolsheviks and helped them destroy the independent peasant movement dominated by the Socialists-Revolutionaries.
The Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, which represented four-fifths of Russia’s population, rejected the October coup. It sent no delegates to the Second Congress of Soviets, joining instead the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland and the Revolution. This opposition was awkward for the Bolsheviks; they had to win over the Peasants’ Congress or, failing that, replace it with another body, friendly to them. Their strategy, which they subsequently repeated in regard to the Constituent Assembly and other democratic but anti-Bolshevik representative bodies, involved three steps. First, they sought to gain control of a given body’s Mandate Commission, which determined who could attend: this enabled them to bring in more Bolshevik and pro-Bolshevik deputies than they would have obtained in free elections. If such a body, packed with their followers, nevertheless failed to pass Bolshevik resolutions, they disrupted it with noise and threats of violence. If that method also failed, then they declared the meeting unlawful, walked out, and set up a rival meeting of their own.
As the elections to the Constituent Assembly, held in the second half of November, would demonstrate, the Bolsheviks enjoyed no support in the rural areas. This bode ill for their prospects at the Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, scheduled for the end of November, where the SRs were certain to pass resolutions denouncing the Bolshevik dictatorship. To prevent this, the Bolsheviks, helped by the Left SRs, tried to manipulate the Mandate Commission demanding that the delegates to the congress, ordinarily elected by provincial and district soviets, be augmented with representatives from military units. This demand had no justification, since the military already were represented in the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet. But the SRs on the Mandate Commission, eager to placate the Bolsheviks, agreed: as a result, instead of completely dominating the Peasants’ Congress, they had to make do with a bare majority. The final tally of deputies to the Peasants’ Congress showed 789 delegates, of whom 489 were bona fide peasant representatives, chosen by the rural soviets, and 294 were men in uniform handpicked by the Bolsheviks and Left SRs from the garrisons of Petrograd and vicinity. The party affiliation showed 307 SRs and 91 Bolsheviks; the affiliation of the remaining 391 was not stated, but judging by subsequent voting results, a high proportion of them were Left SRs.*
In yet another conciliatory gesture, the SR leadership agreed to giving the chairmanship of the congress to Maria Spiridonova, the leader of the Left SRs. Although the peasants indeed idolized her for her terrorist exploits before the Revolution, it was an ill-considered concession because the impulsive Spiridonova was completely manipulated by the Bolsheviks.
The Second Congress of Peasants’ Deputies opened in Petrograd on November 26 in the Alexander Hall of the Municipal Duma. From the outset, Bolshevik deputies, cheered on by the Left SRs, engaged in disruptive tactics, hooting, screaming, and shouting down speakers from rival parties; for a while they physically occupied the rostrum. The disturbance forced Spiridonova on several occasions to declare a recess.
The critical session took place on December 2. On that day, several SR speakers protested the arrest and harassment of delegates to the Constituent Assembly, some of whom were also elected to the Peasants’ Congress. During one of these speeches, Lenin appeared. An SR, pointing at him, shouted to the Bolsheviks: “You will bring Russia to the point where Nicholas will be replaced by Lenin. We need no autocratic authority. We need the rule of soviets!” Lenin asked to speak in his capacity as head of state, but he was told that since no one had elected him, he could only have the floor as head of the Bolshevik Party. His address denigrated the Constituent Assembly and dismissed complaints of Bolshevik harassment of its deputies. Lenin promised, however, that the Assembly would meet when a quorum of 400 deputies had gathered in Petrograd.