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Collection « Les sciences sociales contemporaines »

Une édition électronique réalisée à partir de l'article de Mark-David Mandel, “The Intelligentsia and the Working Class in 1917.” Un article publié dans la revue CRITIQUE. A Journal of Socialist Theory, no 14, 1981, pp. 67-87. Glasgow, England. [Autorisation accordée par l'auteur le 7 avril 2011 de diffuser le texte de cette conférence dans Les Classiques des sciences sociales.]

[67]

David MANDEL *

The Intelligentsia
and the Working Class
in 1917
.


Un article publié dans la revue CRITIQUE. A Journal of Socialist Theory, no 14, 1981, pp. 67-87. Glasgow, England.


Tereshchenko, sugar manufacturer and Minister for External Affairs in the last Provisional Government, was not engaging in mere small talk when he asked the sailor escorting him to jail after the storming of the Winter Palace, 'How will you manage without the intelligentsia ?' [1] This question, in fact, points to a key process in the Revolution of 1917 - the growing alienation between the working class and the intelligentsia, and especially that part of it that referred to itself as 'democratic' or 'socialist' [2] This was a process whose roots reached back to 1905, and perhaps even earlier, but which attained its culmination only in October 1917, in the overwhelming hostility of the intelligentsia to Soviet Power and their refusal to cooperate with it.

In contemporary usage the term intelligent was synonymous with a person earning (or looking forward to earning, i.e., a student) his or her living in an occupation recruited from among those with an academic or at least secondary education, or the equivalent. For example, when in April 1917 the senior personnel of the Petrograd Post Office attempted to form their own union in reaction to the egalitarian tendencies of the Union of Post and Telegraph Employees, they called themselves 'The Provisional Organising Bureau of Intelligentnykh Employees of the Petrograd Central Post Office and Branches', emphasising their 'education, upon which you have expended at least a quarter of your lives', and contrasting themselves to their opponents, people 'who cannot even spell their names correctly'. [3] Similarly, Levin, a Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR) member of the Central Soviet of Factory Committees in Petrograd, wrote in December 1917 : 'People who have had the good fortune to receive a scientific education are abandoning the people ... And in the latter instinctively grows a hatred for the educated, for the intelligentsia'. [4]

[68]

But aside from the objective definition, the term had also a moral component : the intelligentsia were the people preoccupied with the 'accursed questions', with the historical fate of the nation. Pitirim Sorokin referred to them as 'the carriers of intellect and conscience'. [5] And in the Russian context, this moral connotation also carried with it a strong undertone of service to the people.

Historically, this moral element had, to a significant degree, corresponded to reality. At least since the mid-nineteenth century, the politically active element of the intelligentsia had opposed the autocracy and, though only a minority of the educated stratum, it nevertheless tended to set the tone for the entire intelligentsia. For the next half-century the main problem confronting it was to bridge the seemingly impassable gulf separating it from the people, to draw the dormant masses into the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of autocracy. There were, to be sure, periods when attempts were made to change the regime from within, most notably after the great reforms and after the Revolution of 1905. Moreover, a significant segment of the intelligentsia gave its support to the liberal movement, which, though opposed to the autocracy, was also against revolution. Nevertheless, by the eve of 1917 there was not a single class or stratum of any significance in Russian society, including the intelligentsia, that actually supported the regime. True to the academic literature on revolutions, the prerevolutionary situation was indeed characterised by the 'alienation of the intelligentsia from the ancien regime'. [6]

But a closer look at developments within Russian society and especially at the issue of the socialist intelligentsia's self-definition in relation to the propertied classes on the one hand, and to the workers and peasants, on the other, reveals that its relationship to the revolutionary movement was in reality much more complex. For already in 1905 one can discern signs of a movement away from radicalism and from the popular masses, although it was not really until the period of reaction of 1907-11 that the workers became fully aware of what they termed the 'betrayal of the intelligentsia', a betrayal that seemed to have come amazingly swiftly. [7]

In his study of the SR Party, Radkey writes of

a metamorphosis of... the populist intelligentsia from insurrectionaries in 1905 to jaded democrats in the period between the revolutions and then to fervent patriots, partisans of the Entente, and devotees of the cult of the state in the coming war... They clung to the old S.R. label even though the old faith was gone, aside from the residue of interest in political liberation... [8]


A similar process was taking place within social democracy. Haimson finds that the private correspondence of the Menshevik leaders in 1909-1911

[69]

is replete with despondent statements... about the wholesale withdrawal ,from political and social concerns that seemed to have accompanied the radical intelligentsia's recoil from the underground struggle. Most party members, these letters suggest, had in fact withdrawn from party activities and were wholly absorbed in the prosaic if arduous struggle to resume a normal, day-to-day existence[9]

In the Bolshevik wing, which dominated the labour movement in 1912-1914, the period of labour's recovery from the defeat of 1905 and the ensuing reaction, an especially bitter sense of betrayal is felt in the memoirs of workers. Shliapnikov wrote of an 'ebb' that had begun in 1906-1907 and left so few intellectuals among the Petersburg Bolsheviks that there were hardly enough 'literary forces' to meet the needs of the Duma faction and the daily newspapers.

In place of the raznochintsy-intelligenty, young students, the worker-intelligentsia appeared with callouses and a highly developed intellect and continuous ties with the workers[10]

Kiril Orlov (Ivan Egorov), a skilled Petersburg metalworker and member of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee during the war, recalled :

During the war there was absolutely no party intelligentsia among the entire membership of the P(etersburg) C(ommittee). Somewhere in the city, it lived a totally separate existence, nestled around Maxim Gorky, but neither the proletariat nor its districts knew or had any information about it. We felt that we, the proletarians, were alone. There was not even anyone to write a small pamphlet or an appeal. They all sat with their arms folded, grieved and fled from illegal work, as the devil flees from incense. The workers were left to their own resources[11]

And if this was the sentiment in the capital, the feeling of betrayal was even stronger in the provinces. Martsionovskii, a Bolshevik carpenter, wrote :

In a whole series of cities where I took part in illegal work, almost everywhere the party committee consisted exclusively of workers. The intelligentsia was absent, with the exception of those on tour who came for two or three days. In the most difficult years of the reaction, the workers remained almost without leaders from the intelligentsia. They said that they were tired, that young people were coming to relieve them. But the youth in the meanwhile got carried away with artsybashevshchina. Some sought new gods, others went abroad and the rest led philistine lives. But that was the period after the destruction of our organisation. Somewhat after that, the intellectuals decided that it was not good to be revolutionaries and they actively set to organising a new current of liquidators. At the start of the imperialist war, they stood for the defence of the country and denied their fundamental slogans, taking with them many workers who had not yet had time to thin things through... We, the underground workers, had to work without the intelligentsia, with the exception of individuals. But on the other hand, after the February Revolution, they showed up, they beat their breasts and shouted 'We are revolutionaries', etc., but in fact, [70] none of them had conducted revolutionary work, and we had not seen them in the underground[12]


But as Martsionovskii indicates, a certain rapprochement between the workers and the intelligentsia did take place during the 'honeymoon period' of national unity created by the February Revolution. For in February the propertied classes, even while grating their teeth, did finally rally to the revolution, thereby facilitating its victory ; and the working class followed the 'conciliationist' wings of social democracy and populism into a political alliance (albeit a very guarded and hesitant one) with the propertied classes, 'census society'. This was the system of dual power.

But the rosy atmosphere of February proved short lived. In a matter of months - in some cases only weeks - the workers set out on the path of opposition to census society and 'their' government. Already. at the end of May the Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees voted 297 v. 89 (with 45 abstentions and 46 votes cast for the anarchist resolution making no reference to the state) for the transfer of power to the Soviets, i.e., for a regime in which the propertied classes would not be represented - for a dictatorship of the toiling classes, of revolutionary democracy. [13] On the evening of July 3 the Workers' Section of the Petrograd Soviet, for the first time on a purely political issue, also voted for Soviet power. [14] By late September 1917 the Bolsheviks had won majorities in the Soviets of virtually every town in Russia that had any large-scale industry or a garrison of significant size. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, October 25-27, out of some 650 delegates there were 390 Bolsheviks and 90 Left SRs. [15] (The Left SRs would enter a coalition Soviet government within a few weeks.) The chief reason for this shift among the workers was their growing conviction that census society was counterrevolutionary. And, in fact, it was fast becoming clear to all that the propertied classes would like nothing better than to see an end to the Soviets and other workers' organisations, something that was demonstrated rather graphically in their support for the Kornilov uprising, with its aim of installing a military dictatorship and crushing the [71] labour movement. [16] Even the Democratic Conference in the second half of September, a conference carefully packed by the Menshevik and SR leaders of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets with the more conservative elements of revolutionary democracy, in effect voted against the formation of a government that included representatives of census society. [17]

On the background of the re-emerging class polarisation, the rift between the workers and the intelligentsia also resurfaced - and with a vengeance. At a conference on adult education in the early fan of 1917, Lunacharskii, a Bolshevik intellectual active in cultural affairs, gave the report on the state of worker-intelligentsia cooperation in the cultural sphere. He spoke of the great thirst for knowledge among the working class that was going unsatisfied because 'at present, one observes that the proletariat itself is isolated from the intelligentsia... thanks to the fact that the proletariat has crossed over to the banner of the extreme left wing of democracy, while the intelligentsia found itself on the right'. Although this characterisation provoked protests among the representatives of the intelligentsia, Lunacharskii insisted that 'the proletariat is not to blame, but rather the intelligentsia, which has a strongly negative attitude to the political tasks the proletariat has put forward'. [18]

Very revealing in this respect is V. Polonskii's survey of Russian journalism for 1917, 'that collective physiognomy that until recently reflected the soul of our so-called intelligentsia, our spiritual aristocracy' :

... One could hardly find another group of people aside from the intelligentsia in whose thoughts and moods the revolution has wreaked such cruel havoc. I have before me a pile of newspapers, magazines, brochures. Among the current material one most often finds that theme which is most prominent in our intelligentsia's consciousness : 'the intelligentsia and the people'. And as one reads, the picture that emerges is most unexpected. Until recently, the. predominant type of intelligent was the intelligent-narodnik, the well-wisher, sighing sympathetically over the lot of our 'smaller brother'. Now, alas ! this type is an anachronism. In his place appears the malevolent intelligent, hostile to the muzhik, the workers, the entire dark toiling mass. 'Today's' are no longer striving, like the earlier type, to fill in some sort of abyss separating them from the muzhik, just the opposite : they want to set themselves apart from the muzhik with a clear and impassable line... Such is the portentous and sudden shift that one observes. In literature, it [72] expresses itself exceedingly clearly. In a large number of articles devoted to the people and the intelligentsia are treated as a benighted. brutal. greedy. unbridled mass. rabble : and their present leaders - as demagogues, worthless nullities. emigres. careerists who have taken as their motto that of the bourgeoisie of old France : Après nous, le déluge... If you recall what yesterday's defenders and advocates of the people have written lately about the rule of the mob (okhlokratia). the extremely alarming fact of our present situation becomes indisputable : the intelligentsia has completed its departure from the people. The intelligentsia had just enough strength left to bid good night to the *one who suffers all in the name of Christ, whose rough eyes do not cry. whose sore lips do not complain'. And it was enough for that eternal sufferer to rise to its feet. to mightily shrug its sholders and take in a full breath for the intelligentsia to feel itself disappointed.

And it is not the excesses of the October Days nor the madness of Bolshevism that are the cause of this. The departure of the intelligentsia, the transformation of the 'populists' into 'evil-wishers', began long ago, almost on the morrow of the (February) Revolution[19]

The clearest Political expresion of the deepening rift is to be found in the continuous growth throughout 1917 of the Bolsheviks' electoral support at the expense of the moderate socialists.

RETURNS IN THE PETROGRAD DISTRICT
DUMA ELECTIONS (MAY 2 7 - JUNE 5, 1917) ;
CITY DUMA ELECTIONS (AUGUST 20, 1917) ;
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY (NOVEMBER 12-14, 1917)

(in %)

May

August

November

Bolsheviks

20.4

33.4

45.0

Menshevik-SR.

56.0

44.0

19.2

Kadet

21.9

20.8

26.2

Other

1.7

1.8

9,6

Sources : Rech', June 3, 8, 9, 1917 ; Delo narodna, August 23-24, 1917 ; Nasha rech', November 17, 1917,

The breakdown by district as well as other independent data show that the Bolshevik vote in Petrograd came overwhelmingly from the workers and soldiers (in October, the garrison stood at approximately 90,000 men and the industrial work force at about 400,000). The correlation between the ratio of industrial workers employed in a district to the total registered voters, on the one hand, and the relative size of the Bolshevik vote, on the other was r = 0.7594 (at a significance of p(F) 0.0005). [20] While the workers abandoned [73] the moderate socialists, opting for a break with the properties classes, the middle strata of society - the small owners, artisans, and especially senior and middle-level white-collar employees, the professional and technical intelligentsia - either stayed put or shifted into the Kadet camp.

Within the socialist parties themselves, a parallel process occurred. According to Radkey, with the breakup of the SR Party in September 1917

it is clear... that nearly all the sailors and a large majority of the workers and army went with the L(eft) SR, most of the intellectuals and white collar workers stayed where they were, and the peasantry divided into two camps. the larger loyal to the (Right) SR but the lesser one already sizable and steadily growing... From every quarter came complaints of a dearth of intellectuals which seriously impeded the activity of the new party. Sukhanov termed it the party of the rural plebs and ranked it even lower on the cultural scale than the Bolsheviks, the party of the urban plebs[21]

Similarly, at the Second Petrograd Conference of the Bolshevik Party in July 1917, Volodarskii complained of the 'wholesale desertion of the intelligentsia', adding :

The intelligentsia, in accord with its social background, has crossed over to the defencists and does not want to carry the revolution further. It does not come to us, and everywhere it. has taken the position of resisting the revolutionary steps of the workers[22]

A few weeks later, at the Sixth Party Congress, he gave the following report on the Petrograd Organisation :

Work is being conducted by local forces from the worker masses. There are very few intelligentnye forces. All organisational work is done by the workers themselves. The members of the C.C. (heavily intelligent in composition) took little part in our organisational work. Lenin and Zinoviev very rarely, as they were preoccupied with other work. Our organisation has grown from below[23]

Of course, in the provinces matters were even worse. The Bolshevik Central Committee was being constantly bombarded with urgent requests to send 'literary forces', 'at least one intelligent'. Sverdlov, the party secretary, almost invariably replied that no one could be spared, that the situation in the capital was hardly better. [24]

In the eyes of the rank-and-file workers there was also a growing identification of Bolsheviks with workers and Mensheviks and SRs with intellectuals. For example, in June 1917 the factory committee at a certain Moscow tea-packing plant was still exclusively Menshevik, except for one member. When asked by a visiting Menshevik joumalist why he too was not a Menshevik, he replied that he belonged to no party but voted for the Bolsheviks because 'on their list there are workers. The Mensheviks are all gospoda (gentlemen) -doctors, lawyers, etc.' He added also that the Bolsheviks stood for soviet power and workers' control. [25] Speaking on [74] October 14 at the soviet of Orekhovo Zuevsk (a textile town in the Central Industrial Region), a certain Baryshnikov stated :

Due to the fact that the ideology and politics of the working class presume a radical reformation of the current system, the relationship of the so-called intelligentsia, the SRs and Mensheviks (!), to the workers has-grown very strained. And therefore, there already exists no ties between us, and in the eyes of the working class they have once and for all defined themselves as servants of bourgeois society[26]

As the workers shifted to the left, it became increasingly difficult to find educated spokesmen for their positions. Workers' conferences became increasingly plebian affairs. A report on the Conference of Railroad Workers was characteristic : 'Almost a total absence of intelligentsia. Even the praesidium consists almost completely of the « rank-and-file »'. [27]

It was the July Days that forced the workers to directly confront the implications of their growing isolation from the intelligentsia. On July 3 and 4 the majority of Petrograd's industrial workers along with a part of the garrison came out in a peaceful demonstration to 'force' the Central Executive Committee of Soviets to put an end to the coalition and take power on its own. But the unthinkable happened : not only did the soviet leadership not heed the will of the workers, it actually stood by while the government undertook a campaign of repressions against the workers and left socialists. (Some, like Tsereteli, leader of the Central Executive Committee and Minister for Internal Affairs in the Provisional Government, directly sanctioned the repressions. In most other cases, however, there were protests, but they were weak and ineffective because these people refused to contemplate a break with the government and census society.)

This turn of events drastically altered the political situation. Now it appeared that power could be won only against the resistance of the moderate socialists and their supporters. Among other things, this meant that the socialist intelligentsia would be overwhelmingly hostile to such a regime. As a result, the aftermath of the July Days saw the workers deeply shaken and confused over how to proceed toward their goal of a government without census society, a government of revolutionary democracy that would undertake an active peace policy, organise the collapsing economy, give land to the peasants, and deal firmly with the even more vociferous and threatening forces of counterrevolution.

For the workers, the major significance of the intelligentsia lay in the latter's near monopoly of the skills and knowledge needed in running the economic and state machinery of the country. To take power without their support, let alone in the face of their active resistance, was a very frightening prospect. This emerges with great force from the protocols of the Second Conference of Factory Committees of Petrograd of August 10-12, 1917. The general consensus among the delegates was that Russia's industry was [75] fast heading for total collapse, aided by the sabotage of the industrialists on the local level and by their opposition to state regulation of the economy on the national level. The workers themselves would have to assume full control of production. As one delegate stated :

We have to exert all our energy in this struggle (to prepare our own economic apparatus to take over at the moment of capitalist collapse). Especially as class contradictions are revealed more and more and the intelligentsia leaves us, we have to rely only on ourselves and take all our organisations into our workers' hands[28]

The whole assembly was painfully aware of the tremendous difficulty of the task. 'Throughout all the reports', noted one delegate, 'runs the cry of a lack of (qualified) people, like a red thread'. [29] 'Tsarism did everything to leave us unprepared', lamented another, 'and naturally, everywhere, in both political and economic organs, we lack (qualified) people'. [30]

How were they to proceed in such circumstances ? A Menshevik worker, Sedov, argued that in the given situation there could be no question of the workers taking power on their own.

We are alone. We have few workers capable of understanding state affairs and of controlling. It is necessary to organise courses in government affairs and in control of production. If we take power the masses will crucify us. The bourgeoisie is organised and has at its disposal a mass of experienced people. But we do not, and therefore we will not be in a position to hold power[31]

However, the great majority of the delegates adhered to the position expressed by the delegate from the Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Factory :

The bourgeoisie knows its interest better than the petty bourgeois parties. The bourgeoisie completely understands the situation and has expressed itself very clearly in the words of Riabushinskii, who said that they will wait until hunger seizes us by the throat and destroys all that we have won. But while they are grabbing for our throats, we will light and we will not back down from the struggle[32]

Over and over again, the speakers exhorted each other to shuck off the old habits of dependence upon the intelligentsia.

The working class has always been isolated. It always has to conduct its policy alone. But in a revolution the working class is the vanguard. It must lead the other classes, including the peasantry. It all depends on the activity of workers in various organisations, commissions, etc., where we must be a majority of workers. Against the advancing hunger we must pit the activity of the masses. We have to disown the Slavic spirit of laziness and together cut a path through the forest that will lead the working class to socialism[33]

[76]

Someone suggested that the conference limit the number of working sections because of the complexity of the issues and the shortage of 'active forces'. But Voskov, a carpenter from the Sestroretsk Arms Factory, retorted :

The absence of intelligenty in no way impedes the work of the sections. It is high time the workers abandon the bad habit of continually looking over their shoulder at the intelligenty. It is necessary that all participants at the conference enter some section and work there independendy[34]

The workers needed to prepare themselves psychologically as well as technically for what lay ahead.

In fact, their worst fears did materialise in October. The Mensheviks and SRs walked out of the Congress of Soviets, refusing to enter any government responsible solely to the soviets (and also, consequently, with a Bolshevik majority) ; the senior and middle-level administrative and technical personnel in the state machinery and credit institutions responded with a strike [35] ; and their counterparts in the industrial enterprises firmly refused either to recognise the new government or to cooperate with workers' control. [36] The depth of the hostility to the insurrection and the new regime that was characteristic of the socialist intelligentsia (and which in its intensity and bitterness had no counterpart even among the most defencist workers) can be felt in the resolution of the Executive Bureau of the Socialist Group of Engineers in late October 1917 :

A band of utopians and demogogues, utilising the fatigue of the workers and soldiers, by means of utopian appeals to social revolution, through deliberate deceit and slander of the Provincial Government, has attracted to it the dark masses, and despite the will of the huge part of the Russian people, on the eve of the Constituent Assembly has seized power in the capitals and certain cities of Russia. With the aid of arrests, violence against the free word and press, with the aid of terror, a band of usurpers is trying to maintain itself in power. The Bureau of the Socialist Group of Engineers, decisively protesting against this seizure, against the arrest of Kerenskii, against murders, violence, against closure of newspapers, against persecutions and terror, declares that the acts of the usurpers have nothing in common with socialist ideals and destroy the freedom won by the people... True socialists cannot give the slightest support either to the usurpers of power or to those who will not decisively and firmly break with them[37]

Also characteristic of the times was the general support for the new regime among the manual workers and lower white-collar personnel in the public organisations and credit institutions and their condemnation of their striking superiors. Thus, after the October Revolution the Soviet government dismissed the Petrograd City Duma for its refusal to recognise the new [77] regime and called new elections, which were boycotted by all but the Bolshevik and Left SR parties. At the first meeting of the new Duma, Kalinin, its head, reported that the 'intelligentnye employees were clearly disrespectful when... (I) tried to speak with them and showed their intention of resisting. But the municipal workers (rabochie) and lower employees were happy about the transfer of power to the workers'. [38]

Alexander Blok, one of the few of the older generation of prominent literary figures to embrace the October Revolution, characterised the state of mind of the intelligentsia in the winter of 1918 in the following manner :

'Russia is going under' 'Russia is no more' 'Eternal memory to Russia' - that is what I hear on all sides... What did you think ? That the revolution was an idyll ? That creativity does not destroy anything in its path ? That the people is a good little boy ?... The best people even say, 'There hasn't been any revolution'. The ones who were obsessed with hatred of 'tsarism' are ready to fling themselves back into its arms, just to be able to forget what is going on now. Yesterday's 'internationalists' weep for 'Holy Russia'. Born atheists are ready to light votive candles for the victory of the external and internal foes... So we have been hacking away at the very branch we were sitting on ? A lamentable situation. With voluptuous malice we stuck firewood, shavings, dry logs into a heap of timber damp from the snows and rains ; but when the sudden flame flares up to the sky (like a banner), we run around, crying 'Oh, ah, we're on fire ![39]

The workers did not take the final step in October with a light heart. In fact, the majority of workers, while yearning desperately for soviet power, hesitated and temporised before the 'action', until the more decisive minority forced the issue by beginning the uprising, at which point the overwhelming mass of workers rallied to its support. [40] Yet even now, many workers were reluctant to accept their isolation and supported the slogan of a 'homogeneous socialist government', i.e., a coalition of all socialist parties (although many insisted, like Lenin and Trotsky, that only internationalists - Left SRs and Menshevik-Internationalists - should be allowed in, the defencists having been written off once and for all).

But the negotiations between the parties finally broke down, largely over the issue of whether the government would be responsible to the Soviets or not. The defencists rejected this, demanding that the Soviet representatives form only a minority in the parliamentary body to which the government would be responsible. The Bolsheviks, on their part, felt that the demand for representation for the Moscow and Petrograd city dumas and the like, was an attempt to re-introduce the coalition through the back door and, in any case, to prevent a Bolshevik (and soviet) majority in the government. Thus, in an article entitled '2 x 2 = 5', the Menshevik-Internationalist Bazarov argued :

[78]

At certain factories at present, resolutions are being passed that demand at the same time a homogeneous democratic government based upon an accord of all socialist parties and the recognition of the current (overwhelmingly Bolshevik) TsIK (Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies) as the organ to which the government should be responsible... (But) at present a purely soviet government can only be Bolshevik. And with each day it becomes clearer that the Bolsheviks cannot govern : decrees are issued like hotcakes and cannot be put into practice... Thus, even if what the Bolsheviks say is true, that the socialist parties have no masses behind them but are purely intellectual... even then large concessions would be necessary. The proletariat cannot rule without the intelligentsia... The TsIK can be only one of the institutions to which the government is to be responsible[41]

Once it became clear to the workers that the real issue was soviet power and not merely the personal vanity of the party leaders, the issue was decided for them : they gave their full support to the all-Bolshevik government For example, on October 29, the workers of the Admiralty Shipyards called on all workers

regardless of party hue, to exert pressure on their political centres to achieve an immediate accord of all socialist parties, from Bolsheviks to Popular Socialists inclusive, and to form a socialist cabinet responsible to the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies on the following platform : Immediate proposal of democratic peace. Immediate transfer of land to the hands of the peasant committees. Workers' control of production. Convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the assigned date[42]

Yet only eight days later, after the negotiations on a socialist coalition had broken down, the same workers, with only three abstentions, voted

to speak out for full and undivided soviet power and against coalition with parties of defencist conciliators. We have sacrificed much for the revolution and we are prepared, if it is necessary, for new sacrifices, but we will not give up power to those from whom it was taken in a bloody battle[43]

All the same, when the Left SRs also concluded that 'even if we had got such a "homogeneous government", it would really have been a coalition with the most radical part of the bourgeoisie' [44] and decided to enter the soviet government, thus symbolising a union between the workers and the poorer peasants, the workers breathed a collective sigh of relief : now there was at least unity among the nizy, the lower classes. The Putilov workers declared :

We, the workers, as one person, greet this unification as one we have long desired and we send all our warm greetings to our comrades working on the platform of the Second All-Russian Congress of Toiling People of the poorest peasantry, workers, and soldiers[45]

The October Revolution tore Russian society into two, leaving the bulk of the intelligentsia either on the census side of the barricades or [79] dangling somewhere in between. [46] And the workers responded to this perceived betrayal with growing bitterness. As the Left SR Levin wrote :

At the moment when the old bourgeois chains of state are being smashed by the people, the intelligentsia is deserting the people. Those who had the good fortune to receive a scientific education are abandoning the people who carried them on their exhausted and lacerated shoulders. And as if that were not enough, in leaving, they mock their helplessness, their illiteracy, their inability to painlessly carry out great transformations, to attain great achievements. And this last is especially bitter for the people. And in the latter instinctively grows a hatred for the 'educated', for the intelligentsia[47]

The workers'attitude toward the intelligentsia (socialist or otherwise) in the first months after the October Revolution are summed up in the following impressions of a trip to Moscow in December 1917, printed in Novaia zhizn' :

... If the external traces of the insurrection are few, the internal split within the population is deep indeed. When they buried the Red Guard and Bolshevik soldiers (following the victory of the insurrection in early November), I was told, one could not find a single intelligent or university or high-school student in the extraordinarily grandiose procession. And during the funeral of the Junkers (Officer's school cadets who fought on the side of the Provisional Government) there was not a single worker, soldier or pleb in the crowd. The composition of the demonstration in honour of the Constituent Assembly was similar- the five soldiers following behind the SR Military Organisation's banner only underlined the absence of the garrison.

Now the abyss between the two camps has been especially deepened by the general strike of municipal employees : teachers of municipal schools,, higher personnel of the hospitals, senior tram employees, etc. This strike places the work of the Bolshevik municipal government before extreme difficulties, but it exacerbates the hatred in the nizy of the population for all the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie even more. I myself saw a conductor make a high school student get out of the car : 'They teach you, alright, but it seems they don't want to teach our children !'

The strike of the schools and the hospitals is seen by the urban nizy as a struggle of the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia against the popular masses[48]

Why did this rift between the people and the socialist intelligentsia occur ? Before attempting to answer this, one should perhaps ask if the workers' perception of a 'betrayal' was at all justified. After all, viewed from one perspective, it was the workers who left the intelligentsia by shifting to the left and opting for a break with census society and, in the longer run, for social revolution.

The causes of the workers'shift can roughly be summed up as follows : they decided to break with census society when they had reached the conclusion that it was counterrevolutionary, that the propertied classes were out to destroy the political and social (though not socialist) gains of the [80] February Revolution. October was first and foremost an act of defence of the actual and promised achievements of February in conditions where society had split into two irreconcilably hostile camps. And although October was seen as opening the way to socialism, all the measures taken in October and the following months were seen either as completing the democratic revolution or as fundamentally defensive actions aimed at preserving the revolution in the new citcumstances. [49] When the October Revolution is viewed in this light, the workers' sense of betrayal can be better understood.

There was also the moral element of the intelligentsia's self-image as 'servants of the people'. As the Menshevik-Internationalist paper, itself hostile to the October Revolution. put it. now each worker could ask the striking doctors and teachers : 'You never struck in protest of the regime under the Tsar or under Guchkov. Why do you strike now, when power is in the hands of the people we recognise as our leaders ? [50] Even people like Martov, whose selfless dedication to the cause of the working class cannot be doubted, felt like washing his hands of everything rather than doing 'what seems to be our duty - to stand by the working class even when it is wrong... It is tragic. For after all, the entire proletariat stands behind Lenin and expects the overturn to result in social emancipation - realising all the while that it has challenged all the antiproletarian forces'. [51]

Why then did the socialist intelligentsia 'run away' as the workers saw it ? Writing of the populists, Radkey offers one explanation :

In the trough of the revolution (many) had gone into public service or social work as civil servants in zemstvos and municipalities. as functionaries in the cooperative societies, where the daily routine and outlook induced were alike deadening to the revolutionary split. Others had entered the professions. All were getting older[52]

But such an explanation is problematic, not least because it remains totally undocumented. In any case, it seems rather unlikely that so profound a transformation as the economic integration of the intelligentsia into the existing order could have taken place in some ten-odd years. And one cannot but wonder how the populist intellectuals earned their living before 1907. Surely they were not all professional party activists and hungry students. And if the generation of 1905 was getting old, what of the students of 1917 ? They were young and unsettled, yet even the right-wing Menshevik Potresov, at a debate in May 1918 on 'The Russian Students and the Liberation Movement', stated that 'In February we saw the common joy of the students and petty bourgeois. In October the students and the bourgeois have become synonymous'. [53]

[81]

In my view, the background for the 'flight' should be sought in the growing class polarisation in Russian society that began to openly manifest itself already in the fall of 1905, when the bourgeoisie, frightened by the militancy of the workers now pushing for 'social' demands (the eight-hour day) and enticed by the concessions offered by the shaken autocracy, retreated from revolution and turned against the workers' movement notably, cooperating with the state factory administrations in a mass lockout in November 1905 [54]). Henceforth, the labour movement would never again enjoy, except perhaps for a brief period immediately after the February Revolution, the all-national sympathy it had known in the years leading up to 1905. It was during the next upsurge, in 1912-1914, when one already could not separate the economic from the political collective actions of the workers, and with the bourgeoisie working closely with the state in fighting the labour movement, that the Bolsheviks became the undisputed leaders, effectively ousting the Mensheviks from all industrial labour organisations. [55] For the Bolsheviks, in contrast to the Menshevik wing of social democracy, rejected any political cooperation with census society in the struggle against autocracy, arguing that 1905 had proved that the propertied classes feared the workers and peasants more than they wanted to see an end of Tsarism ; that, in fact, they would join with the state in putting down any revolutionary attempt.

The mass of the socialist intelligentsia, on the other hand, however opposed to the autocracy, found it very difficult to adhere to such an independent movement of the nizy of society that was increasingly opposing itself not only to Tsarism but to census society as well. [56] This explanation, however, raises the further question : why did the polarisation of society have this effect on the intelligentsia ? Perhaps the best way to answer this is to first look at what they themselves were saying.

I. Gordienko, a Bolshevik metalworker, tells of an encounter with Gorky that he and two fellow workers from the 'red' Vyborg District of Petrograd arranged because they found the attacks of Novaia zhizn' on the Bolsheviks very upsetting. 'Why, among its editorial board, was A.M. Gorky ? More than once we posed the question to each other : Can it be that A. M. Gorky has completely moved away from US ?’ [57] As all three workers hailed originally from Nizhnii-Novgorod, Gorky's home town, they used this as an excuse to pay him a visit. Before long, the conversation turned to politics :

[82]

Aleksei Maksimovich. lost in thought said : 'It's hard for you boys, very hard'. 'And you, Aleksei Maksimovich, you're not making it any easier'. I replied. 'Not only doesn't he help. but he is even making it harder for us', said Ivan Chugurin.

Ekh, boys, boys, you are such fine lads. I feel sorry for you. Listen in this sea, no, in this ocean of petty bourgeois peasant elemental forces, you are only a speck of sand. How many of you solid Bolsheviks are there ? A handful. In life you are like a drop of oil in the ocean, a thin, thin ribbon. The slightest wind, and it will snap.'

'You speak in vain, Aleksei Maksimovich. Come to us, to the Vyborg District. Take a look around. Where there were 600 Bolsheviks there are now thousands Thousands, but raw, unshod, and in other cities even these are lacking.' 'The same is taking place, Aleksei Maksimovich, in the other cities and villages. Everywhere the class struggle is intensifying.'

'That's why I love you, for your strong faith. But that's also why I fear for you. You will perish, and then everything will be thrown back hundreds of years. It's terrible to contemplate.'

A couple of weeks later the three returned to find Sukhanov and Desnitskii (another Novaia zhizn' editor) there.

Again, Aleksei Maksimovich referred to the sea of petty bourgeois. He grieved that there were so few of us old underground Bolsheviks, that the party was so young and inexperienced... Sukhanov and Lopata affirmed that only a madman could talk of a proletarian revolution in so backward a country as Russia. We protested determinedly. We said that behind the facade of all-Russian democracy they were definding the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie...

During the conversation, Aleksei Maksimovich walked over to the window that overlooked the street, then quickly came over to me, seizing me by the sleeve and taking me to the window. 'Take a look', he said in an angry and hurt voice. What I saw was really disgraceful. Near a bed of flowers on the freshly cut green lawn, a group of soldiers were seated. They were eating herring and tossing the waste onto the flower bed.

'And it's the same thing at the People's House (a popular place for political meetings and cultural events) : the floors are waxed, spittoons have been placed in every comer and next to the columns, but just look at what they do there', said Maria Fedorovna (Gorky's wife), who managed the People's House, angrily. And with this crowd the Bolsheviks intend to create a socialist revolution', said Lopata spitefully. 'You have to teach, educate the people and then make a revolution.'

'And who will teach and educate them ? The bourgeoisie ?' one of us asked. 'And how would you go about doing it ?' asked Aleksei Maksimovich, now smiling. 'We would like to do it differently', I replied. 'First overthrow the bourgeoisie, then educate the people. We'll build schools, clubs, people's houses...'

'But that's unrealisable', declared Lopata. 'For you, it is ; not for us', I answered. 'Well, maybe they will, the devils, eh ? said Aleksei Maksimovich. 'We definitely will achieve it', one of us replied, 'and it will be all the worse for you'.

'Oho ! You're threatening. How will it be worse for us ?' asked Aleksei Maksimovich, laughing. 'In this way : with or without you, we will do what we must under the leadership of Il'ich, and then they will ask you where you were and what you were doing when we were having such a bad time of it.' [58]

In the fall of 1917, Lenin gave a strikingly similar account of a conversation he had had not long before the July days with a well-to-do lawyer.

This lawyer was once a revolutionary, a member of the Social Democratic and even Bolshevik Party. Now he is all fright, all anger at the rampaging and irreconcilable workers : 'Alright, I understand the inevitability of a social revolution ; but here, given the decline in the level of the workers caused by the war... that isn't a revolution, it's an abyss'.

[83]

He would be prepared to recognise the social revolution if history led tip to it just as peacefully, calmly, smoothly and accurately as a German express train comes into a station. The very proper conductor opens the door of the car and proclaims : 'Station Social Revolution. Alle aussteigen (everybody out) !' In that case why not transfer from the position of an engineer working for the Tit Tityches (big bourgeoisie) to the position of an engineer working for the workers' organisations..
This man has seen strikes. He knows what a storm of passions the most ordinary strike arouses, even in the most peaceful of times. He, of course, understands how many millions of times more powerful this storm must be when the class struggle has raised up the entire toiling people of a huge country, when war and exploitation have brought millions of people almost to despair, people whom the landowners have tortured, whom the capitalists and Tsarist bureaucrats have plundered and oppressed for decades. He understands all this 'theoretically', he recognises all this only with his lips, he is simply frightened by the 'extraordinarily complex situation'. [59]

Finally, Sukhanov, a journalist and left Menshevik, who by October came out against the coalition but nevertheless was also against soviet power, offered the following explanation for his position :

We stood against the coalition and the bourgeoisie alongside the Bolsheviks. We did not merge with them because some aspects of positive Bolshevik creativity as well as their methods of agitation revealed to us the future odious face of Bolshevism. It was an unbridled, anarchistic, petty bourgeois stikhia, which was eliminated by Bolshevism only when it again had no masses behind it[60]

This fear of the stikhia - the 'elemental', 'benighted', 'uncultured', anarchistic' masses - is a basic motif in all the statements of the socialist intelligentsia. It is certainly a constant theme in Menshevism since 1905 and goes far toward explaining their rejection of the Bolsheviks' (pre- 1917) tactic of a 'democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants'. For them, the peasants, as well as the 'unconscious' worker elements still tied to their peasant origins (who, ironically, were the last to abandon the Menshevik and SR position of support for the coalition government in 1917), were the personification of this stikhia. Having thus rejected the peasants as suitable allies for the workers, they were, in a sense, compelled to insist on the existence of significant liberal and progressive elements among the bourgeoisie that the workers could nudge towards revolution.

Put in its mildest form, the socialist intelligentsia was saying that the popular masses were simply not up to the task they had taken upon themselves (the more leftist elements would even say - that they had been forced to take upon themselves). They were, as Lenin's lawyer lamented, too I uncultured', not like the German workers. Those elements closer to the labour movement were even ready to admit that the workers, and especially their conscious stratum, were as fit for ruling as any group in the old society ; but they hastened to add, as Gorky did, that they were too few, too weak numerically to create anything positive in peasant Russia. As for a revolution in the developed West coming to Russia's aid, this was too uncertain. Better to wait for it to happen first. [61]

[84]

While not doubting the sincerity of the socialist intelligentsia's fears, one cannot help but feel that these, at least to a significant extent, served as rationalisations for other motives, of which, no doubt, they were not even aware in many cases. After all, as Polonskii points out and other evidence brought above confirms, this shift from 'defender of the people' to 'evilwisher' did not suddenly occur in October 1917, after the 'illegitimate' seizure of power. As noted, its beginnings reach back to 1905, if not earlier. October merely made the split final, while allowing it to appear that it was the 'undemocratic' nature 'of the insurrection that so upset the socialist intelligentsia rather than the fact that power had been transferred to the soviets, organs solely of the -workers, soldiers and peasantry. And yet, not even the Bolshevik leaders knew in October that the new government would disperse the Constituent Assembly. On the contrary, they pledged to hold the elections and convene the assembly at the set dates. This was in quite sharp contrast to the eight months of postponements of elections by the Provisional Government (largely due to the pressure of the liberals), a government elected by no one and in its final stages officially responsible to no one. Even if the Bolshevik-led Petrograd Soviet had made the insurrection 'behind the back' of the Congress, as the Mensheviks and SRs claimed, there could be no denying that the new government had been confirmed by the majority of the Congress, itself democratically elected by the workers and soldiers (peasants in army greatcoats) of Russia. And yet the socialist intelligentsia supported the Provisional Government to the end and met the Soviet government with bitter and active opposition.

Of course, the level of culture among the vast majority of the population, the peasantry, was abominably low. Nor was it that much better among the mass of unskilled workers, mostly women who had come from the countryside to work in the expanding war industry. But what sort of culture did the propertied classes represent ? Had not the Russian Bourgeoisie greatly helped to push the autocracy into the world war for the sake of Constantinople and the Straits, for markets and the greater glory of Russia ; into a world slaughter that claimed in the millions lives on the Russian side alone ? And did they not, even after February and throughout 1917, when the popular masses insisted on a democratic, nonannexationist peace, continue to support the old war aims to the bitter end ? Had they not given their tacit blessing and support to General Kornilov, who intended to drown the revolution in the blood of the people just as the Tsar had done with the Revolution of 1905 ? Had the industrialists not resisted state regulation of the economy, despite its existence in all the other warring countries, thereby making the collapse of industry (which they now blamed solely upon the workers) inevitable ?

[85]

Sukhanov relates a seemingly trivial anecdote, but one that argues on much the same level as did the socialist intelligentsia when discussing the low level of culture among the masses, their spitting on floors and throwing herring bones on the grass. At the Preparliament, which counted among its members the most prominent public figures of census society as well as the representatives of 'revolutionary democracy', Trotsky made a speech pointing out that the census members had voted against a resolution for making the government responsible before the Preparliament. And yet, they were represented in that body much more strongly than they could ever hope to be in the Constituent Assembly, elected by direct and universal suffrage. From this fact Trotsky concluded that the bourgeoisie never really meant to convene the Constituent Assembly or to make it sovereign. Sukhanov recalled the reaction on the Right to this statement :

The noise and skandal intensified. Someone shouted : Merzavets ! (The Russian equivalent

of 'son of a bitch' or 'bastard'). At a meeting of the nizy (the plebs) such a shout had not been heard during the entire course of the revolution. Now we were in good company, and the kabak atmosphere of the State Duma (the Tsarist 'parliament', whose members were overwhelmingly landowners, bourgeois, or intellectual) was resurrected[62]

But if, all the same, one grants that the intelligentsia's concern about the uncultured masses was genuine and legitimate, could one not ask if their tactic of noncooperation and even sabotage made sense ? Would it not have been more rational, even from their own point of view, as the bearers of culture, to throw in their lot with the masses and try to have at least some influence on the movement that was rolling forward with or without them ? After all, as noted earlier, even the moderate socialists by now were unable to deny that the mood among the propertied classes was strongly counterrevolutionary (though they were still unable to bring themselves to break totally with them).

In fact, of course, there were individual members of the intelligentsia who, while hostile to the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution, nonetheless did not stand aside, and for just the reasons noted above. For example, a certain Brik, evidently a cultural figure in Petrograd, wrote to Novaia zhizn' in early December 1917 :

To my surprise, I find myself on the Bolshevik list to the Duma (i.e., the muncipal government). I am not a Bolshevik and am against their cultural policy. But I cannot let matters slide. It would be a disaster if the workers were left to themselves to set policy. Therefore, I will work - but under no (external) discipline. Those who refuse to work and wait for the counterrevolution to restore culture are blind[63]

In December, the Union of Internationalist Teachers (not a Bolshevik-led organisation) left the All-Russian Union of Teachers over the issue of the [86] strike, stating that it was 'impermissible that schools should be used as a political weapon'. They called upon all teachers to 'cooperate with the regime to create a new socialist school'. [64]

The point is that the reaction of the great majority of the socialist intelligentsia to the October Revolution does not follow quite logically from the reasons they offered for their stand. And this, again, leads one to ask if there might not have been additional motives behind their irreconcilable position. It seems to me that the vast majority of the socialist intelligentsia were, in fact, as the Left SRs ultimately concluded in November 1917, radical democrats, 'the most radical part of the bourgeoisie'. So long as the task had been to overthrow the semifeudal autocracy, to make a 'bourgeois-democratic' revolution, they supported and even spurred on the popular movement. But when it began to emerge that this task in Russian conditions - and even more so in Russia in the midst of world war - would necessarily transform itself into a struggle against the bourgeoisie itself and (largely implicitly until 1917) against the social order the bourgeoisie represented, then the socialist intelligentsia began to feel the ground tremble beneath their feet, they began to fear that the position they enjoyed in this society would be threatened. And despite everything, they did enjoy certain privileges in terms of income, prestige, and a certain professional autonomy, however narrowly defined in practice. These privileges, and their genuine mistrust and fear of the masses, bound them to the existing social (i.e., capitalist) if not political order.

Of course, much of the intelligentsia's action was premised upon the belief, extremely widespread in October, that the new regime would be shortlived. When this proved to be false, a large part of the intelligentsia returned to serve the new regime. But they did so cap in hand, totally compromised and under suspicion. This effectively deprived them of any independent influence on the course of post-revolutionary developments. This abyss between the intelligentsia and the people, much wider than that of the nineteenth century, when it had been a question of awakening the still slumbering masses, was not one that could be easily filled over.

In retrospect, it might seem only too easy to argue that the intelligentsia was right. After all, a major theme in Lenin's last years was the urgent need to raise the abominably low cultural level of Russia. And certainly, the generally low level of culture, especially political culture, was an important factor in the progressive elimination of soviet and party democracy and the ultimate rise of Stalin. But one must also ask if the socialist intelligentsia, of course with important exceptions, did not help to ensure by its own actions that its fears would come true.

The material upon which this paper is based pertains mainly to Petrograd and the other larger industrial centres of Russia, which together [87] contained the great bulk of the intelligentsia. But to round off the picture an analysis should be made of those elements of the intelligentsia that did not meet October with hostility. Unfortunately, limitations of time and space perforce make this a topic for another paper. However, a very cursory evaluation of some of the available evidence seems to indicate that these elements, always a minority even outside the larger cities and in the countryside, were to be found most frequently among the less well-to-do stratum, e.g., among the 'third element' of the zemstvos, those who - through their life and work among the masses, through their understanding and sympathy for their needs and struggle - were able to cast aside their fears and remain loyal to their conception of the intelligent as one who puts his or her education at the service of the people.



* David Mandel teaches in the Department of Policial Science at McGill University, Montreal.

[1] Cited in S.P. Melgunov, The Bolshevik Seizure of Power, (ABC-CAO : 1972), 90.

[2] The term 'democratic' or 'socialist intelligentsia' was used by way of contrast with the 'bourgeois intelligentsia', i.e., people like P.V. Miliukov, professor of history and leader of the Kadet (liberal) Party, who was identified with the interests of the propertied classes- census society. It is the former, members or sympathisers of the socialist parties and of the lower classes, of 'revolutionary democracy', that are the main focus of this paper.

[3] K. Bazilevich, Professional'noe dvizhenie rabotnikov sviazi (Moscow : 1927), 33.

[4] Znamia truda, (December 17, 1917).

[5] Volia naroda, (November 6, 1917). Sorokin was Kerenskii's personal secretary, later to become one of the deans of American academic sociology.

[6] For a 'classic' formulation of this view, see C. Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution, (1938), 56.

[7] L.M. Kleinbort, Ocherki rabochei intelligentsii, (Petrograd : 1923), 176-177.

[8] O. Radkey, The Sickle under the Hammer, (New York, Columbia University Press : 1963), 469-470. See also Znamia truda, (November 15, 1917), on how the populist intelligentsia tended, in contrast to the workers, towards a defencist position during the war.

[9] L.H. Haimson, 'The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917', in M. Cherniavsky, The structure of Russian History, (New York ; Random House : 1970), 346.

[10] A. S. Shliapnikov, Kanun semnadisatovo goda, (Moscow-Petrograd : 1923), 9.

[11] K. Orlov, Zhizn'rabochego revoliutsionnera. Ot 1905 k 1917 g., (Leningrad : 1925), 29.

[12] A. Martsionovskii, Zapiski revoliutsionnera-bol'shevika, (Saratov, 1923), 89. This was Martsionovskii's perception of the situation. In fact, in the capitals at least, students played a not insignificant role in 1912-14, especially in the early stages (see for example, E.E. Kurze's article in Istoria rabochikh leningrada, vol. I, (Leningrad : 1972, 419). But this was not even remotely comparable to their role in 1905 or in the liberation movement preceding it. At any rate, as far as the intelligentsia as a whole is concerned, Martsionovskii's picture is essentially accurate. The epithet 'artsybashevshchina' used by Martsionovskii here is derived from the name of a prerevolutionary novelist whose work was condemned in the revolutionary movement as decadent and pornographic - M.P. Artsybashev.

[13] Oktiabr'skaia revoliutsia i fabzavkomy, (Moscow-Leningrad : 1927), vol. 1, 197 (henceforth cited as FZK).

[14] Novaiazhizn', July 4,1917. In fact, the first resolution for soviet power was passed by this body as early as the end of May in connection with the government's plan to 'unload' Petrograd of her industrial enterprises (see Izvestia, June 2, 1917).

[15] W.H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, (New York : Grosset and Dunlap, 1965), vol. 1 : 320. See also Novaia zhizn', October 26, 1917 : Znamia truda, October 27, 1917 ; and N. Sukhanov, Zapiski a revoluitsii, (Berlin-Petrograd-Moscow : 1922), vol. 7 : 216.

[16] The most prominent representatives of census society were declaring this with increasing candour and frequency at various public forums. Even after Komilov's defeat and arrest, Miliukov continued to defend him in public, declaring him an honest man and patriot. See Sukhanov, op. cit., vol. 6 : 302.

[17] V. Vladimirova,Revoluitsia 1917g., (Moscow-Leningrad : 1926), vol. 4 : 240. See also Sukhanov, op. cit., vol. 6 : 93-137 passim. According to the regulations of the Soviet, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets was to be convened at this date, three months after the First Congress. But such a congress would undoubtedly have voted to take power. For this reason, the Menshevik-SR leaders decided to postpone it and call a 'Democratic Conference' instead. The amended resolution on state power called for a coalition, but without Kadets, since that party was compromised in the Kornilov Affair. However, since there were no politically significant elements in census society that did not support the Kadets or were not in full solidarity with its positions, the resolution was meaningless and, accordingly, overwhelmingly defeated. This was the dilemma of the 'compromisers' : they kept insisting on a coalition with the propertied classes when there was really no one left in census society of any political significance that did not want to crush the popular revolution, and the 'compromisers' with it.

[18] Novaia zhizn', October 18, 1917.

[19] Ibid., January 4, 1918. The fact that Polonskii was writing for Novaia zhizn', the MenshevikInternationalist paper that was hostile to the October Revolution and the 'madness of Bolshevism', gives his characterisation added weight- namely, that the 'departure' was not the result of the October Rising or the Bolsheviks' policies, but began much before that.

[20] Essentially, this means that the more industrial workers employed in a district, the greater the Bolshevik share of the vote ; 0.7594 is a very high correlation. For the number of registered votes see Nasha rech', November 17, 1917 ; the number of industrial workers by district - Z.V. Stepanov, Rabochie Petrograda v period podgotovki i provedenia oktiabr't skovo vooruzhennovo vossatnia, (Leningrad : 1965, 30).

[21] Radkey, op. cit., 159.

[22] Vtoraia i tret'ia obshchegorodskie konferentsii bol'shevikov v iule i sentiabre 1917g., (Moscow-Leningrad : 1927), 28.

[23] Shestoi vserossiiskii s'ezd RSDRP(b). Protokoly, (Moscow, 195 8), 45.

[24] See Perepiska sekretariata TseKa RSDRP(b) s metsnymy organizatsiamy, mart-oktiabr'1917 (Moscow : 195 7), passim.

[25] Rabochaia gazeta, June 20, 1917.

[26] Nakanune Oktiabr'skovo vooruzhennovo vosstania v Petrograde, (Moscow : 1957) 152.

[27] Znamia truda, November 17, 1917. This conference was called by the manual workers (rabochie) in the railroad depots and workshops of Moscow and Petrograd in opposition to the Menshevik-Intemationalist-ed All Russian Railway Union, which encompassed all employees of the railroads, up to and including the Minister of Paths of Communications himself. The composition of this workers' conference was about two-thirds Bolshevik, the rest being Left SRs with a smattering of Menshevik-Internationalists.

[28] FZK I. 189.

[29] Ibid., 188.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid., 208 Riabushinskii was a big banker and industrialist, politically on the left wing of his class. It was in a speech in May 1917 in which he bitterly attacked the soviets that he made this statement. He subsequently became notorious in workers' circles, the very symbol of the kapitalist-lokautchik (lockouter).

[32] [Aucune référence dans le texte de l’auteur publié dans la revue CRITIQUE. JMT.]

[33] Ibid., 206.

[34] Ibid., 167.

[35] Among the strikers were the mostly socialist employees of the Ministry of Labour, led by the Menshevik S. Schwarz, and also the higher and middle employees of the municipal governments, including teachers and doctors. See Novaia zhizn', November 13, December 8, 22 and 30, 1917.

[36] Zaniatia pervoi moskovskoi oblastnoi konferentsii, (Moscow : 1918), 47-48, cited in N. Lampert, The Technical Intelligentsia in the Soviet Union 1926-1935, PhD thesis, C.R.E.E.S., University of Birmingham, U.K. : 1976, 19.

[37] A.L. Popov, Oktiabr'skii perevorot, (Petrograd : 1919), 364.

[38] Novaia zhizn, December 5, 1917. See also Oktiabr'skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Petrograde, (Moscow : 1957), 368, 514-75 ; and C. Volin, Deiatel' nost' men' shevikov v profsoiuzakh pri sovetskoi vlasti, Inter-University Project on the History of Menshevism, paper No. 13, October 1962, 28.

[39] Znamiatruda, January 18, 1918, translated in M. Raeff, ed., Russian Intellectual History, 1966, 364, 369, 371.

[40] This and what follows are based on D. Mandel, The Development of Revolutionary Consciousness Among the Industrial Workers of Petrograd February 1917 - November 1918, PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, Columbia University : 1977, especially the chapter 'October Insurrection'.

[41] Novaia zhizn', November 4, 1917.

[42] Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii i sotsialisticheskovo stroitel'stva, opis' 9, fond 2, delo 11, list 45.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Znamia truda, November, 8, 1917.

[45] Ibid., No. 75, 1917.

[46] Sorokin's definition in November 1917 of the 'creative forces' of society (as opposed to 'pseudo-democracy') is telling : Onto the stage must now come, on the one hand, the intelligentsia, the carrier of intellect and conscience, and on the other, the genuine( !) democracy, the cooperative movement, the Russia of the dumas and zemstvos, and the conscious( !) village. Their time has come' (Volia naroda, November 6, 1917). Conspicuous by their absence are the workers and soldiers, and, of course, all the 'unconscious' villages, the peasants who supported the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks. All the organisations named were still dominated by moderate socialists and Kadets and lacked any mass political support.

[47] Znamia truda, December 17, 1917.

[48] Novaia zhizn, December 12, 1917.

[49] The causes of this shift are dealt with in detail in D. Mandel. op. cit.

[50] Novaia zhizn'. December 6. 1917. Actually. this was not quite accurate. in 1905, the intelligentsia, organised in the Union of Unions, did participate in the strike movement in the fall. But that was the first and last time. They gave no active support to the colossal strike movements of 1912-1914 and 1915-1916.

[51] L.H. Haimson, The Mensheviks, (Chicago : 1975). 102-103. In fact, Martov's sense of duty won out, and the Mensheviks, as a party, reoriented themselves. playing the role of a more or less loyal opposition.

[52] Radkey. op. cit., 469-470.

[53] Znamia bor'by, May 21, 1918.

[54] Ia. A. Shuster, Peterburgski rabochie v 1905-1907 gg., (Leningrad : 1976), 166-168.

[55] L. H. Haimson, op. cit.

[56] It is interesting, however, that, besides Trotsky, no one before 1917 seems to have followed to their logical conclusion the implications of this for the post-revolutionary regime that would emerge from such a movement.

[57] After October, Novaia zhizn' became the target of especial working class anger for indulging in bitter criticism of the ineptitude of the new regime while at the same time the group it represented, the Menshevik-Internationalists, adopted a 'neutral' position refusing to participate in the regime. Thus, at the February 1918 Conference of Factory Committees, a speaker bitterly attacked the 'sabotaging intelligentsia of Gorky's Novaia zhizn', who are busy criticising the Bolshevik government and themselves do nothing to lighten the task of this government' (Novaia zhizn', January 27, 1918). See also the letter of the Putilov workers to the 'bitter backward writers' of Novaia zhizn', ibid., December 22, 1917.

[58] I. Gordienko, Iz boevovo proshlovo, (Moscow : 1957), 98-101.

[59] V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., (Moscow, 1962), vol. 34, 321-322. 'Tit Titych' was a despotic rich merchant in Ostrovsky's play Shouldering Another's Troubles.

[60] Sukhanov, op. cit., vol. 6, 192.

[61] On this, the position of the workers and their Bolshevik leaders was that to wait meant to give the counterrevolution the chance for a new offensive on the background of an economic situation that continued to deteriorate as the government sat back and did nothing. They also felt that they did not have to wait for the revolution in the West, that a working class revolution in Russia that would propose a general peace would give that slumbering revolution a mighty shot in the arm.

[62] Ibid, 249.

[63] Novaia zhizn', December 5, 1917.

[64] Ibid, December 6, 9, 13, 1917.



Retour au texte de l'auteur: Jean-Marc Fontan, sociologue, UQAM Dernière mise à jour de cette page le vendredi 15 novembre 2013 18:08
Par Jean-Marie Tremblay, sociologue
professeur de sociologie retraité du Cégep de Chicoutimi.
 



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