On March 31 the Bolsheviks had the Cheka search the headquarters of the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries and impound the literature found there. Otherwise they did not interfere as yet, probably from fear of provoking worker unrest.
Aware that the urban workers were turning against them, the Bolsheviks delayed holding soviet elections. When some independent soviets did so anyway, producing non-Bolshevik majorities, they disbanded them by force. The inability to use the soviets compounded the workers’ frustration. In early May, many concluded that they had to take matters into their own hands.
On May 8, massive worker assemblies were held at the Putilov and Obukhov plants to discuss the two most burning issues: food and politics. At Putilov, over 10,000 workers heard denunciations of the government. Bolshevik speakers were given a hostile reception and their resolutions went down in defeat. The meeting demanded the “immediate unification of all socialist and democratic forces,” the lifting of restrictions on free trade in bread, fresh elections to the Constituent Assembly, and reelections to the Petrograd Soviet by secret ballot.142 Obukhov workers passed, with a virtually unanimous vote, a similar resolution.143
The next day an event occurred at Kolpino, an industrial town south of Petrograd, which added fuel to growing worker discontent. Kolpino had been especially badly served by government supply agencies: and with only 300 of the city’s work force of 10,000 employed, few had money to buy food on the black market. A further delay in food deliveries provoked the women to call a city-wide protest. The Bolshevik commissar lost his head and ordered troops to fire on the demonstrators. In the ensuing panic the impression spread that there were numerous dead, although, as transpired later, there was only one fatality and six injured.144 By standards of the time, nothing extraordinary: but Petrograd workers needed little cause to give vent to pent-up anger.
Having heard from emissaries sent by Kolpino what had happened there, the major Petrograd factories suspended work. The Obukhov workers passed a resolution condemning the government and demanding an end to the “rule of commissars” (komissaroderzhavie). Zinoviev, the boss of Petrograd (the government having in March moved to Moscow), put in an appearance at Putilov. “I have heard,” he told the workers, “of alleged resolutions having been adopted here charging the Soviet Government with pursuing incorrect policies. But one can change the Soviet Government at any time!” At these words the audience broke into an uproar: “It’s a lie!” A Putilov worker named Izmailov accused the Bolsheviks of pretending to speak for the Russian workers while humiliating them in the eyes of the whole civilized world.145 A gathering at the Arsenal approved 1,500–2 with 11 abstentions a motion to reconvene the Constituent Assembly.146
The Bolsheviks still prudently kept in the background. But to prevent these inflammatory resolutions from spreading, they shut down, permanently or temporarily, a number of opposition newspapers, four of them in Moscow. The Kadet Nash vek, which reported extensively on these events, was suspended from May 10 to June 16.
Since they planned to hold the Fifth Congress of Soviets early in July (the Fourth Congress having been held in March to ratify the peace treaty with Germany), the Bolsheviks had to hold elections to the soviets. These took place in May and June. The outcome exceeded their worst expectations: had they any respect for the wishes of the working class, they would have given up power. In town after town, Bolshevik candidates were routed by Mensheviks and SRs: “In all provincial capitals of European Russia where elections were held on which there are data, the Mensheviks and SRs won the majorities in the city soviets in the spring of 1918.”147 In the voting for the Moscow Soviet the Bolsheviks emerged with a pseudo-majority only by means of outright manipulation of the franchise and other forms of electoral fraud. Observers predicted that in the forthcoming elections to the Petrograd Soviet the Bolsheviks would find themselves in a minority as well148 and Zinoviev would lose its chairmanship. The Bolsheviks must have shared this pessimistic assessment, for they postponed the elections to the Petrograd Soviet to the last possible moment, the end of June.
These stunning developments meant not so much an endorsement of the Mensheviks and SRs as a rejection of the Bolsheviks. The electors who wanted to turn the ruling party out of power had no alternative but to vote for the socialist parties since they alone were permitted to put up opposition candidates. How they would have voted had they been given a full choice of parties cannot, of course, be determined.
The Bolsheviks now had an opportunity to practice the principle of “recall,” which Lenin had not long before described as “an essential condition of democracy,” by withdrawing their deputies from the soviets and replacing them with Mensheviks and SRs. But they chose to manipulate the results, by using the Mandate Commissions, to declare the elections unlawful.
To distract the workers, the authorities had resorted to class hatred, inciting them this time against the “rural bourgeoisie.” On May 20, the Sovnarkom issued a decree ordering the formation of “food supply detachments” (prodovol’stvennye otriady), made up of armed workers, which were to march on the villages and extract food from “kulaks.” By this measure (it will be described in greater detail in Chapter 16) the authorities hoped to deflect the workers’ anger over food shortages from themselves to the peasants, and, at the same time, gain a foothold in the countryside, still solidly under SR control.
Petrograd workers were not taken in by this diversion. Their plenipotentiaries on May 24 rejected the idea of food supply detachments on the grounds that it would cause a “deep chasm” between workers and peasants. Some speakers demanded that workers who joined such detachments be “expelled” from the ranks of the proletariat.149
On May 28, the excitement among Petrograd workers rose to a still higher pitch when the workers of Putilov demanded an end to the state’s grain monopoly, guarantees of free speech, the right to form independent trade unions, and fresh elections to the soviets. Protest meetings which passed similar resolutions took place in Moscow and many provincial towns, including Tula, Nizhnii Novgorod, Orel, and Tver.
Zinoviev tried to calm the storm with economic concessions. He apparently persuaded Moscow to allocate to Petrograd additional food shipments, for on May 30 he was able to announce that the daily bread ration of workers would be raised to eight ounces. Such gestures failed to achieve their purpose. On June 1, the meeting of plenipotentiaries resolved to call for a city-wide political strike:
Having heard the report of the representatives of factories and plants of Petrograd concerning the mood and demands of the worker masses, the Council of Plenipotentiaries notes with gratification that the withdrawal of the mass of workers from the government that falsely calls itself a government of workers is proceeding apace. The Council of Plenipotentiaries welcomes the readiness of workers to follow its appeal for a political strike. The Council of Plenipotentiaries calls on the workers of Petrograd vigorously to prepare the worker masses for a political strike against the current regime, which, in the name of the worker class, executes workers, throws them into prison, strangles freedom of speech, of press, of trade unions, [and] of strikes, which has strangled the popular representative body. This strike will have as its slogan the transfer of authority to the Constituent Assembly, the restoration of the organs of local self-government, the struggle for the integrity and independence of the Russian Republic.150