We publish this english translation of the article "Triunfa a Revolução Socialista" from A Nova Democracia issue 198:
One hundred years of the Great October Socialist Revolution
"V.I. Lenin proclaims Soviet power" by Vladimir Serov, 1917
At the end of October (beginning of November)1 the march for the Socialist Revolution continued without stopping. The preceding days to insurrection were marked by the development of an energetic preparatory work within the military unities, factories and industries.
October 21st (November 3rd ) the Assembly of Representatives of the Post Regiment of Petrogrado approved a resolution for complete support to the Military Revolutionary Committee (CMR)2 and proposed the execution of the workers and soldiers forces review for the following day, when it would be celebrated the Soviet Day in Petrograd. At the same day Bolshevik comissioners from CMR were sent to all revolutionary troop unities with the aim to inform them on the preparatives for the insurrection.
The counterrevolution, on the other side, intended to hold a cossack‘s3 “procession” on October 22nd (November 4th ) to be considered as a Kerenski’s force demonstration in Petrograd. Thanks to the large political Bolshevik work amidst the Cossak troops, their representatives comiited themselves not to combat the soldiers and workers. Thus, the Party frustrated such a dangerous provocation from the Provisional reactionary government.
The revolutionary troops review was a success. At the military units, factories, public places – large concert halls, movies, etc. – very great meetings were held. The workers practically occupied the whole city, showing the real Bolshevik strenght.
The following days the Red Guards Conference took place and statutes were passed, whose first item was: “The worker Red Guard is the organization for the proletariat armed forces for combatting the counterrevolution and for the defense of the revolution conquests”. Thus the Soviet from Petrograd took over the organization and political direction of the Red Guard.
The military units of Petrograd Post, one after the other, decided to support Petrograd Soviet and CMR.
By the just Bolshevik leadership at Aurora Cruiser Committee, the Party met Kerensky’s plan to deviate the warship – controlled by the Petrograd’s revolutionaries - to failure.
THE COUNTERREVOLUTION TRIES TO JOIN FORCES
The Provisional Government tried to join forces against the ascending revolution. The Justice Minister ordered Lenin’s prison and Kerenski discussed with the Navy and War Ministers on acions for repressing the Bolsheviks in case they acted. One of the first measures was the transference of units from Petrograd Post to the war front. Patrols from the Military School students that had been loyal to the Provisional Government occupied the most important posts in the city. The General Staff ordered the dismissal and trial of the comissars momeated by the CMR.
The Provisional Government had planned to attack and take the palace of the Smolny Institute, where the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party was settled at the eve of the day supposed to start the sessions for the II Soviet Congress, in order to crush the Bolshevik’s leading centre. For that reactionary troops, loyal to Kerenski, were deployed to Petrograd.
Despite all efforts of the counterrevolution, the revolutionary masses’ actions under the Bolshevik direction would grow and strenghten.
LENIN FIGHTS ASGAINST THE VACILLATING STANCES
The questions on the armed insurrection were discussed in district assemblies organized by the Bolshevik Party where certain vacillations had been verified from some Party members. Namely Trotsky that had just become a member of the Bolshevik Party, affirmed, on October 24th (November 6th ) ,that the Provisional Government prison was not to be done and the question of Power would be solved on the II Soviet Congress of All Russia, to be held on October 25th (November 7th ).
Triumph of the Great Socialist October Revolution establishes the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Russia
Lenin, clandestine at the time, was informed about all events through the party’s emissaries. Thus, when he know about those vacillating stances, he wrote immediately a letter in which he warned the Central Committee members (CC):
“I write these lines on the 24th night and the situation is extremely critical. It is crystal clear that now the delay on the insurrection is equivalent to death.
I try hard to convince the comrades that everything is hanging upon a thread and there are questions to be solved neither with conferences nor congresses (even the Soviet Congress) but exclusively with the people, the masses, the armed mass struggle.
It is necessary for the districts, regiments, all forces to be immediately organized and send without any further delay delegations to the Revolutionary Military Committee, to Bolsheviks CC, demanding them insistently not to leave at any cost the Power in Kerenski’s and company’s hands up to the 25th and decide the question compulsorily tonight or at day break.
History will not forgive the revolutionaries delay who can win today (and certainly they will), risking to lose much tomorrow, risking to lose everything.
Power seizure is a rsult of insurrection; its political objective one clrifies after the takeover.
It would be the ruin and a formalism to wait for the October 25th voting; people have the right and is obliged to solve such questions not by voting but by force; people have the right and is obliged in critical revolution moments to lead their representatives and not wait for them.
That is what the history of all revolutions has been showing and it would be a terrible crime from the revolutionaries to miss the moment knowing that the salvation of revolution, the peaceproposal, Petrograd salvation, hunger salvation, the land handover to the peasants depend on them.
The government is vacillating, It is necessary to crush it, no matter the cost of it.
THE INSURRECTION STARTS
Trotsky, at the session of the Petrograd Soviet, boasting and blabing, delated to the enemies the insurrection date, the day chosen by the Bolsheviks to wage the movement. For not giving Kerensky’s government the possibility to fail the armed insurrection, the Party’s Central Committee decided to start insurrection before the marked date, on the eve of October 25th (November 7th )the day the II Soviet Congress of All Russia should start its sessions.
Bolsheviks take the Winter Palace, October 1917
Kerensky began to act at the first morning hours on October 24th ( November 6th ) ordering to suspend the newspaper Rabochi Put (The Worker’s Road), the main organ of the Bolshevik Party, and sending armoured cars to the newspaper’s office and Bolshevik’s address. Around 10 o’clock, however, following comrade Stalin’s instructions, the Red Guards and the revolutionary soldiers expelled the armoured cars and reinforced the guards from the Bolsheviks’ headquarters and the newspaper’s home office. Some hours late, The Worker’s Road was printed, calling for the Provisional Government’s fall and the establishin of the Soviet Power. At the same time, and following the instructions of the Centre of the Party for insurrection, the Detachments For the Revolutionary Soldiers and Red Guards were concentrated with all urgency at the Smolny Institute.
The CMR sent instructions to all military units to be alert and, by Aurora Cruiser radio, ordered the pots that defended Petrograd entrances to become ready for combatting. At that moment the military units counted with about 150 thousand soldiers and the Red Guard Detachments with more than 200 thousand.
At the same day, during a pre-parliament session, Kerensky declared the Provisional Government intention to smash the insurrection in Petrograd and such a speech was applauded by the Mencheviks4, rightist socialist-revolutionaries5 and kadets6.
On October 25th morning (November 7th ) almost the whole city of Petrograd was on the revolutionaries’ hands who were dominating the most important strategical sites. The Red Guard and the revolutionary troops had occupied the railway stations, the Chief Telegraph and Post-Office, the power station, the Ministeries and the State Bank.
The military units sent by Kerensky to Petrograd changed to the insurrection side. The Pre-Parliament was dissolved.
The Smolny Institute Palace, the Soviet, the Bolshevik Party Central Committee place in Petrograd, where the II Congress of Soviets of All Russia was held, became a Revolution Headquarter. From there the battle orders used to come out.
Petrograd workers demonstrated during those military actions they had learned a lot under the Bolshevik Party leadership. The military revolutionary units, prepared for insurrection by the Bolsheviks’ work, followed the given battle orders and fought fraternally together with the Red Guard. The Navy did not demerited the Army. Kronstadt was a fortress of the Bolshevik Party and did not accept anymore the Provisional Government power. With their canyons aimed at the Winter Palace, the Aurora Cruiser announced, on October 25th, the beginning of a new era, tha era of the Great Socialist Revolution.
On October 25th (November 7th) a Bolshevik summon was published: .To Russia’s citizens. Lenin affirmed on it that the Provisional bourgeois Government had been thrown down and the Power was on the Soviet hands.
“The cause for which the people has been fighting for – the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the end of the landownership, the worker’s control on production, the creation of a Soviet Government – such a cause has been assured. Long Live the workers, soldiers and peasants revolution!“
The Provisional Government had taken refugee on the Winter Palace under the protection of the kadets and feminin batallion. At the night of October 25th and 26th ( November 7th and 8th ) the revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors assaukted the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government members. The armed insurrection in Petrograd had won.
SOVIETS CONFIRM THE POWER SEIZURE
The II Soviet of Aqll Russia Congress was held at the Smolny Institut, at 19,45 pm, October 25th (Sepetember 7th) ,1917, when the insurrection in Petrograd had its peak of glory and the Power, in the capital,was in fact in the hands of the city Soviet.
A total of 649 delegates were at the conference, most of them Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks, rightist revolutionary-socialists and some other conciliators, convencid tha tht Congress majority was beside the Bolsheviks, abandoned the session but not before declaring they renounced to take part in the works that they qualified the Socialist October Revolution as a “military conspiracy”. The Congress ridicularized the Mensheviks and the revolutionary-socialist affirming that they did not regret their exit but congratulated as well with it. And thanks to the traitors’ withdrawals, the Congress would become a real revolutionary Congress of workers, soldiers and peasants representatives.
It was proclaimed In the name of the Congress that all Power would pass to the Soviet hands.
The II Soviet Congress of All Russia’s call said:
“Having the support of the large majority of workers, soldiers and peasants and the victorious insurrection accomplished by the workers and the post of Petrograd, the Congress seizes the Power”.
While the Congress works were occuring at the Smolny Institute, the Winter Palace was tken by the revolutionary troops. The Red Guards, revolutionary soldiers and sailors disarmed and arrested the respresentatives of the Provisional Government who were senyt to Peter and Paul Fortress, with the exception of Kerensky who cowardly escaped from the city in the morning.
Thus, early in the morning pf the Congress second day, in the name of the Bolshevik Party, Anatoli Lunatcharski read the message, To the Workes, Soldiers and Peasants!, written by Lenin, proclaiming the passage of all Power to the Soviets which would ensure a true revolutionary order. The summon would finnish with a call to alertness and resistance.
The message was interrupted many times by strong applauses and at 5pm the congress aproved the document what meant that the II Soviet Congress of All Russia received the Starte Power from CMR and proclaimed the start of all Power to the Soviet workers, soldiers and peasants representatives.
The night on October 26th (November 8th ) the II Soviet Congress of All Russia passed the Decree on Peace. The Congress proposed the belligerent countries an immediate armistice by a minimum deadline of three months for starting peace negociations. At the same time they addressed the governments and people of all belegerent countries, the Congress made an appeal to the conscious workers of the three nations to help “ to put into practice rapidly the cause for peace and with it the cause for liberation of the working and exploited masses of all slavery and exploitation”. Such a decree opened a road for the confraternization among Soviet soldiers and Austro-german soldiers at the war front, even before the official traty between the government of those countries that would be signed at the beginning of 1918.
At the same night, the II Soviet Congress of All Russia approved a Decree on the Land in which it was declared “ immediately abolished, with no kind of compensation, the property of the landlords on land”
Such a law was approved taking as its basis a general peasant mandate, written in accordance with 242 local mandates formulated by the peasants where it was declared abolished the private property right on the land which would be replaced by the property of all people, the State. The landlords’ lands, the imperial family and the Church would be delivered in free usufruct to all workers.
By that decree the October Socialist Revolution would hand over the peasants more than 15- million hectares of land which, that far, had been in the handas of landlords, bourgeoisie, royal family, Mensheviks and the Church.
The peasants were free from the duty to pay the landlords’s profits which were around 500 million rubles per year.
All resources ( oil, coal, minerals, etc.), the woods, and waters would become properties of the whole people.
Finally, the Congress defined the first Soviet Government, a government based on the worker-peasnt iance, the Council for the People’s Comissaries foed by Bolsheviks. For administering it, Lenin was chosen;
He finished his tasks, with this, the historic II All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 27 (November 9). For two days he had carried out a work of great importance: he had ratified the victory of the armed insurrection and proclaimed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, initiating the transformation of the Soviets into a system of organs of State Power.
Congressional delegates scattered across the country to spread the news of the triumph of the Soviets in Petrograd and ensure the victory of Soviet power throughout Russia.
PETROGRAD WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING
But the passage of Power into the Soviets was not so rapid everywhere. The Soviet Power was already in place in Petrograd when the streets of Moscow were still filled with hard and furious fighting that lasted several days. Before allowing the Power to pass into the hands of the Soviet of Moscow, the counterrevolutionary, Menshevik, and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, together with the white guards and the Cadets, unleashed the armed struggle against the revolutionary workers and soldiers. It took several days to crush the factious and establish the power of the Soviets in Moscow.
In Petrograd itself and in its immediate vicinity, during the first days of the triumph of the revolution, some vain counterrevolutionary attempts were made to overthrow Soviet power.
From October 1917 until January / February 1918, the Soviet Revolution was able to spread throughout Russia. So fast was the rhythm with which the Power of the Soviets was settling along the territory of the immense country, that Lenin spoke of the triumphal march of the Soviet Power.
The Great Socialist October Revolution had triumphed. The struggle for the consolidation and maintenance of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was opened in Russia.
Notes:
1 - Reference to the 13 days difference from the old Julian calendar adopted in czarist Russia with the Gregorian Western calendar, dates in parentheses.
2 - Organ attached to the Soviet of Petrograd, directed by the Bolshevik Party and responsible for assuming the functions of Staff of the insurrection. It was led by Comrade Stalin.
3 - Cossacks: native people of the steppes who established ties of vassalage with the Russian czarist regime. The Czarist regime used this people to form feudal military units serving in the custody of frontiers, cities and colonies where they had also played the police role since the sixteenth century. During the revolution of February 1917 the Cossack Regiments of Petrograd, disillusioned with the tsar, joined the revolution. In the civil war that followed the Socialist October Revolution, the Cossacks were divided: on the side of the Red Army, those who had joined the cause of the revolution fought, and on the side of the Counterrevolutionary White Army, mainly officers and more affluent layers were allied.
4 - Mensheviks: means minority, in Russian. Designation of the petty-bourgeois reformist-economicist line, defeated in 1903, at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), which brought together opponents of Lenin's revolutionary line and the majority (Bolshevik) . The Mensheviks refuted the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and maintained that the working class should submit to the leadership of the bourgeoisie.
5 - Right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries: The Socialist Revolutionary Party was a petty bourgeois party that emerged in Russia in late 1901 and early 1902, as a result of the merger of various populist groups and circles, and became the peasant base. The worsening of the economic situation and the growing unmasking of the Provisional Government in 1917 aggravated the differences in the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, a fact that resulted in the rupture of leftist socialist-revolutionaries with such a party. The right-wing socialists supported Kerensky's reactionary government until its overthrow by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.
6 - Kadets: members of the so-called "Constitutional Democratic Party", or simply Kadet. It was composed of representatives of the bourgeoisie and landowners. During the democratic-bourgeois revolution of February 1917, they made every effort to save the monarchy. In the Provisional Government, they allied themselves with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. After the October Socialist Revolution, all his efforts were to sabotage Soviet power.
