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The Monopolization of Power During the Civil War: 1917-1920

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The Monopolization of Power During the Civil War: 1917-1920 2 The Monopolization of Power during the Civil War: 1917-1920 The Bolsheviks faced armed opposition from late 1917 until Novem­ ber 1920. Lenin applied the term civil war broadly (Document 15). He envisaged a titanic struggle of the proletariat with the possessing classes, not only in Russia, but all over the world. In practice, the Civil War was both a context and a rationale for the concentration of power in the hands of a few Bolshevik leaders and for the institutionaliza­ tion of a repressive regime (Documents 22 and 25). Lenin's personal role in banning rival parties, arresting their leaders, and in demon­ strative arrests and summary executions is apparent in several of the documents. The Civil War was total war (see Documents 35-37). Lenin sought to destroy the old regime, weaken its supporters, and secure power, as well as to provision the Red Army. Under the slogan "expropriation of expropriators," he promoted the nationalization of industry and the peasants' seizure of land. Although he had promised workers control over their factories, he soon subordinated the industrial and commer­ cial sectors to the state and party apparatus. His rural policy evolved similarly. He urged the seizure and socialization of land, but then in the spring of 1918, he established a grain monopoly, forcing peasants to sell their crops to the state at artificially low prices or simply to hand over their grain to armed detachments. Decrees in May-June 1918 led to a state monopoly over the food supply. This was the embryo of the future policy of war communism and of the command economy. Neither the economy nor the political system that developed was preordained, and readers should weigh Lenin's ideological inclina­ tions and leadership abilities against other factors, including luck and happenstance. 61 J. Brooks et al., Lenin and the Making of the Soviet State © Bedford/St. Martin’s 2007 Toward One-Party Power 13 From To Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants! October 25 (November 7), 1917 In this appeal, which was sanctioned by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin notes the overthrow of the provisional government and the arrest of its members, many of whom were leaders of leftist or centrist parties. He does not, however, mention the Bolshevik Party, which had begun to rule under the cloak of "soviet power": that is, under the power of the soviets of Petrograd and other cities as in the Bolsheviks' slogan: All power to the soviets. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies has opened. The vast majority of the Soviets are represented at the Congress. A number of delegates from the Peasants' Soviets are also present. The mandate of the compromising Central Executive Committee has terminated. 1 Backed by the will of the vast majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants, backed by the victorious uprising of the workers and the garrison which has taken place in Petrograd, the Congress takes power into its own hands. The Provisional Government has been overthrown. The majority of the members of the Provisional Government have already been arrested .... The Congress decrees: all power in the localities shall pass to the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, which must guarantee genuine revolutionary order. 'The Central Executive Committee of the Soviet was elected at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in June 1917. The majority was in the hands of Mensheviks and SRs. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviet in late October and early November, the new All-Russian Central Executive Committee was elected, including only Bolshe­ viks and left SRs. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 247-48. 62 14 From Resolution of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) on the Opposition within the Central Committee November 2 (15), 1917 Lenin's first government consisted only of Bolsheviks. Yet when he felt that troops under the former premier Kerensky and General Krasnov threat­ ened Bolshevik rule, 2 he negotiated with the Mensheviks and Socialist­ Revolutionaries to form a coalition. The accord reached specified that neither Lenin nor Trotsky would enter the new government. liVhen the counterrevolutionary attacks failed, he renounced the agreement. Several leading Bolsheviks wished the party to abide by the accord, but Lenin ral­ lied a majority to his side. Lenin outsmarted his opponents in this case as in others, and his colleagues never again raised the idea of a coalition. In the following resolution, he and his supporters expressed their hostility to the coalition as well as their contempt for those who supported it. The Central Committee considers that the present meeting is of his­ toric importance and that it is therefore necessary to record the two positions which have been revealed here. 1. The Central Committee considers that the opposition formed within the Central Committee has departed completely from all the fundamental positions of Bolshevism and of the proletarian class struggle in general by reiterating the utterly un-Marxist talk of the impossibility of a socialist revolution in Russia and of the necessity of yielding to the ultimatums and threats of resignation on the part of the obvious minority in the Soviet organization, thus thwarting the will and the decision of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and sabotaging the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry which has been inaugurated. 2. The Central Committee lays the whole responsibility for hindering 2Petr Nikolaevich Krasnov (1869-1947), a Russian general. In 1918, he was the leader of the Don Cossaks. In 1919, he emigrated to Germany. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 277-78. 63 64 THE MONOPOUZATION OF POWER DURING THE CIVIL WAR revolutionary work and for the vacillations, so criminal at the present moment, on this opposition, and invites them to transfer their discus­ sion and their skepticism to the press and to withdraw from the practi­ cal work they do not believe in. For this opposition reflects nothing but intimidation by the bourgeoisie and the sentiments of the exhausted (not the revolutionary) section of the population. 3. The Central Committee affirms that the purely Bolshevik gov­ ernment cannot be renounced without betraying the slogan of Soviet power, since the majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Sovi­ ets, without excluding anybody from the Congress, entrusted power, to this government. 15 Decree on the Arrest of the Leaders of the Civil War against the Revolution November 28 (December 11), 1917 There were several steps in the establishment of the one-party dictator­ ship. One was the banishment of the Cadet Party and the arrest of its leaders. This was done under a special decree written by Lenin. This brief document is important for Lenin's condemnation of the Cadet Party as a "party of the enemies of the people," a phrase he soon applied to all opponents, and as a step curtailing independent political activity. Members of leading bodies of the Cadet Party, as a party of enemies of the people, are liable to arrest and trial by revolutionary tribunal. Local Soviets are ordered to exercise special surveillance over the Cadet Party in view of its connection with the Kornilov-Kaledin civil war against the revolution. This decree enters into effect from the time of signing. V. Ulyanov (Lenin), Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 351. 16 From Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly january 6 (19), 1918 The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was an important step in Lenin's consolidation of absolute rule. The convocation of a Constituent Assembly was a historic demand of Russian revolutionaries. The Bolshe­ viks promised to convene it and permitted the election of delegates to the Assembly in December 1917. At this time, the Bolsheviks were supported by a faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party that had split from their party in late 1917 over support for the revolution and had established the Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Left SRs). The Left SRs did not join the Bolshevik government, but did support the Bolsheviks in elections to the Assembly and later held secondary positions in the government and other administrative bodies. The Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies won roughly a quarter of the votes in the election, mostly in the cities, but the center and right SRs won a majority, and with it, control of the Assembly. The Constituent Assembly convened on january 5 (18), 1918, but refused to confirm the decrees of the Soviet government. Bolshevik Red Guards prevented delegates from entering the meeting hall the following day when the Assembly reconvened at noon. The Soviet government dispersed dem­ onstrations in favor of the Constituent Assembly, and moderate SRs failed to rally enough support to challenge the Bolsheviks. The main initiator of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was Lenin, who prepared the following decree that was adopted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the night of january 6 (19), 1918. At its very inception, the Russian revolution produced the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies as the only mass organiza­ tion of all the working and exploited classes capable of leading the struggle of these classes for their complete political and economic emancipation .... V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 434-36. 65 66 THE MONOPOLIZATION OF POWER DURING THE CNIL WAR The Constituent Assembly, elected on the basis of electoral lists drawn up prior to the October Revolution, was an expression of the old relation of political forces which existed when power was held by the compromisers and the Cadets.
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