Conclusions

11 Conclusions
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of concurrent and overlap-

ping revolutions: the popular revolt against the old regime; the workers’
revolution against the hardships of the old industrial and social order;
the revolt of the soldiers against the old system of military service and
then against the war itself; the peasants’ revolution for land and for con-
trol of their own lives; the striving of middle-class elements and educated
society for civil rights and a constitutional parliamentary system; the revo-
lution of the non-Russian nationalities for rights and self-determination;
the revolt of most of the population against the war and its seemingly
endless slaughter. People also struggled over differing cultural visions,
over women’s rights, between nationalities, for domination within eth-
nic or religious groups and among and within political parties, and for
fulfillment of a multitude of aspirations large and small. These various
revolutions and group struggles played out within the general context of
political realignments and instability, growing social anarchy, economic
collapse, and the ongoing world war. They contributed to both the revo-
lution’s vitality and the sense of chaos that so often overwhelmed people
in 1917. The revolution of 1917 propelled Russia with blinding speed
through liberal, moderate socialist and then radical socialist phases, at
the end bringing to power the extreme left wing of Russian, even Euro-
pean, politics. An equally sweeping social revolution accompanied the
rapid political movement. And all of this occurred within a remarkably
compressed time period – less than a year.
The February Revolution released the pent-up frustrations and aspira-
tions of the population, who put forward long lists of expectations from
the revolution. These, and their fulfillment or nonfulfillment, profoundly
shaped the working out of the revolution. Moreover, the people of the
Russian Empire quickly organized to fulfill their aspirations. Within a
few weeks they created a vast array of organizations for self-assertion:
thousands of factory committees, army committees, village assemblies,
Red Guards, unions, nationality and religious organizations, cultural
and educational clubs, women’s and youth organizations, officers’ and
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Conclusions 283
industrialists’ associations, householders’ associations, economic coop-

eratives, and others. These many organizations represented genuinely
popular movements and gave form to the hopes and aspirations of the
peoples of the empire. For all inhabitants of the Russian state, Rus-
sian and non-Russians, of whatever class, gender, occupation, or other
attribute, the revolution stood for the opening of a new era and a better
future. The struggle was over how to satisfy often competing visions and
conflicting aspirations.
Along with new organizations, new revolutionary language, symbols,
and rituals emerged to express the ideas and aspirations of the revolution.
As Figes and Kolonitskii note, “Words and symbols acted as a code
of communication, whose signals served to sanction and legitimize the
actions of the crowd, to define the revolution’s common enemies, to
uphold principles and generate authority for certain leaders.”1 The new
revolutionary language and symbols were omnipresent in daily speech,
print, dress, demonstrations, and all public functions. They acquired
political significance as political parties and other groups struggled to
appropriate these symbols and to attach their own programs to them.
Success or failure in mastering the new revolutionary vocabulary and
symbolism was important in the failure of the liberals and moderate
socialists and the success of the radicals and Bolsheviks.
Certain words became shorthand for broad aspirations, fears, and
belief systems. They defined both one’s own group and the enemy, legit-
imized one’s own actions, and delegitimized opponents. The most potent
positive word was “democracy,” with words such as freedom, liberty,
and republic close behind. In contrast, “bourgeois” and “bourgeoisie”
quickly developed as potent negative terms against which much of the
lower classes could be mobilized, as well as terms such as “counter-
revolutionaries” and, after August, “Kornilovite.” “Dark forces” and
“German agents” were used vaguely but widely and effectively to mobi-
lize sentiments against a variety of real and imagined enemies. The vocab-
ulary of class (and, by extension, of class conflict) was especially powerful
in 1917 because it could both express an important identity and unite
large numbers of people in a common language of political struggle that
had broad appeal to all those excluded from the world of wealth and
privileges. Particularly striking is the dominance of socialist terminol-
ogy and its success in framing political discourse during the revolution.
“Citizen,” with its broadly inclusive connotations of revolutionary unity
and a liberated people, was very popular, especially in the early months,
but was increasingly challenged by the more exclusive “comrade.” Com-
rade(s), signaling recognition of certain people as democrats, revolution-
aries, and socialists, was at once a unifying term for the political left and
284 The Russian Revolution, 1917
the lower classes and a way to mark off others to whom the term was
not applied – the middle and upper classes, much of educated society,
and non-socialists. Other vocabularies of identity – nationality, peasant,
soldierly comradeship, gender, youth, etc. – played important mobilizing
roles, forging unity and expressing programs of action in a word.
Renaming of places, objects, and people was part of the new rev-
olutionary symbolism. Streets, towns, and naval ships bearing tsarist
names were renamed. The naval warship “Alexander II” became “Free-
dom” and the “Tsarevich” was renamed the “Citizen,” for example.
Streets and squares were similarly renamed, and some stores adopted the
new revolutionary words as names: “Democracy,” “Red Flag,” among
others. Some individuals with names reminiscent of the former regime
(Romanov, Rasputin, for example), or whose names were otherwise con-
sidered unsuitable for the new age, petitioned for a change of name, often
choosing one with a revolutionary flavor (Republic, Freedom, Citizen,
Democrat).
Sound was an important part of this revolutionary world. Speeches,
debates, and shouted slogans of demonstrators were part of daily life.
Revolutionary songs and music accompanied most public activity in
1917. In February, demonstrators marched singing songs of protest and
unity. Mutinous troops on February 27 and 28 often marched out of
their barracks led by their regimental bands. Revolutionary songs were
played constantly at public meetings and during demonstrations, and
often leaflets with revolutionary songs were handed out. The “Marseil-
laise” (in both the original French and more militant Russian version)
was played constantly and became the unofficial anthem of 1917. When
theaters reopened, orchestras often prefaced performances with the Mar-
seillaise, while revolutionary themes, especially celebrations of February,
were sometimes inserted into programs. “Concert meetings” combining
music and revolutionary speeches became popular. Both the Mensheviks
and the Bolsheviks encouraged the “Internationale,” an avowedly class
protest song, which was little known at first but was played and sung
more and more frequently as the year progressed.
A new visual revolutionary symbolism also was everywhere, most con-
spicuously in the omnipresence of red: red banners, red cockades, red
armbands, red ribbons in coat buttonholes or pinned to garments, red
draping speakers’ platforms, and other displays. Red, the traditional color
of revolution since the nineteenth century, became the universal symbol
of the Russian Revolution. Even foreign visitors put red ribbons in their
suit buttonholes. On the other hand, tsarist symbols, such as the two-
headed eagle, were pulled down and destroyed, sometimes in public
rituals. On another level, the street behavior of soldiers, from the cutting
Conclusions 285
off of officers’ shoulder boards to wearing their own hats and uniforms
askew, powerfully symbolized a world turned upside down.
The new revolutionary language and symbols came together espe-
cially in the festivals that were so popular during the first months of the
revolution. The great March 23 burial of victims of the revolution in
Petrograd and the April 18 “May Day” celebrations were the largest and
most famous revolutionary festivals; picture postcards of them circulated
throughout the country and even abroad. At the former, after massive
parades of soldiers and others through Petrograd, 184 people were buried
with great ceremony – revolutionary, not religious – at the “Field of Mars”
in Petrograd, attended by the leaders of the Provisional Government and
the Petrograd Soviet. The location was renamed “Square of the Victims
of the Revolution.” During the spring, festivals of freedom were held
throughout the country. These were festooned in red and accompanied
by the Marseillaise and other revolutionary songs and by fervent speeches
about freedom and democracy. They almost always included parades in
the city, town, or village center, with marchers decked out in their best
clothes and carrying red banners inscribed with revolutionary slogans,
both traditional ones such as “Land and Liberty” and new ones such
as “Long Live a Democratic Republic.” They often included ritualistic
destruction of tsarist emblems and portraits and swearing of allegiance
to the Provisional Government.
The new revolutionary atmosphere was even reflected in moving pic-
tures. Immediately after the February Revolution, film makers produced
a rash of films and documentaries about the revolution, the revolutionary
movement, and with revolutionary themes, including ones providing a
negative characterization of Nicholas and of Rasputin. By mid-year, how-
ever, as the optimism of the early weeks faded, fewer films presented revo-
lutionary themes and movie-makers reverted to standard themes such as
romance, melodrama, and mystery. Darker themes of suicide, violence,
Satan, and pornography became more prevalent, perhaps reflecting the
collapse of the ideals of spring and a growing pessimism about Russia’s
future.2 Enthusiasm for the revolution and new society similarly flour-
ished in the other arts right after February and then faded as the year
wore on and conditions became more difficult.
The new language and symbolism were part of a new era of mass
politics ushered in by the February Revolution. Mass activism was
central to the major political crises of 1917 and to the revolution’s
rapid political evolution. It had forced the Duma to go much further
than it had intended during the February Revolution. It triggered the
April Crisis and formation of coalition government, then demanded
the latter’s replacement by a Soviet government during the July Days
(unsuccessfully), and played an important role in Kornilov’s defeat in

August. Through elections it radicalized the political composition of city
councils, soviets, factory and soldiers’ committees, trade unions, and
other organizations across the country, and thus helped set the stage for
the October Revolution.
This popular activism created a dilemma for educated society. Edu-
cated society, and the intelligentsia in particular, believed in democracy
and many had an almost mystical belief in “the people.” At the same
time, they saw the revolution as an opportunity not merely to take the
government and its powers away from an inept old regime, but an oppor-
tunity to use it to implement long held ideas about the restructuring of
society. Ensconced in the leadership of both the government and sovi-
ets, they still thought in terms of the old notion of the “consciousness”
of the politically educated minority counterposed to the “spontaneity”
of the masses, who had yet to learn how to be responsible citizens and
understand the broader interests of the state and nation. Both the leaders
of the Provisional Government, in all its compositions, and the socialist
leaders of the soviets saw themselves as tutors of the people, who could
easily be led astray if not properly guided. They feared an anarchism of
the masses and saw the Bolsheviks as feeding that tendency. Both lib-
eral and moderate socialist intelligentsia in 1917 were strongly “statist”
and increasingly used “interests of state” to defend measures that were
unpopular with the masses. Moreover, they saw the state as the mech-
anism through which their specific policies could be implemented and
“enlightenment” brought to the people. This tutorial approach clashed
with the ambitions of the mass of the population, who saw themselves as
full and equal citizens. Indeed, many people among the lower orders saw
the revolution not only as a vehicle for fulfilling specific aspirations, but
as a means of throwing off altogether the domination of the upper and
middle, educated classes (increasingly lumped together as “the bour-
geoisie”). The mass of workers, soldiers, and peasants had an uneasy
relationship with their would-be tutors, aware that the educated classes
had knowledge and skills that were essential and sometimes had to be
sought out, but distrustful and even resentful of them as well.
A central problem facing the political elites in 1917 was establish-
ing a viable government and a new political system through which they
could work with the new organizations, gain control over popular self-
assertiveness and fulfill popular aspirations. The Duma Committee, the
Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government created on March 2,
as well as local soviets and Public Committees, were initial attempts by
political elites to consolidate the popular revolution of February, chan-
nel popular self-assertion and direct the revolution’s future course along
Conclusions 287
lines of their own preference. The political elites, however, were in tur-
moil, caught in a sweeping political realignment that recast politics. The
February Revolution swept away the old right wing and transformed the
liberals into the conservatives of the new era, leaving the socialist par-
ties alone on the left wing of the new political spectrum. At the same
time both the left (socialists) and the right (nonsocialists) split into two
subfactions, with centrist and more extreme wings.
The realignment on the right focused on the Provisional Government
and the Kadet Party, the main liberal party. The initial Provisional Gov-
ernment seemed to represent the triumph of liberal, reform Russia over
autocratic Russia. It had achieved the first objective of the revolution –
the overthrow of the autocracy. The present task was to consolidate its
political gains, namely a constitutional parliamentary government and
the guarantee of civil rights. Other goals, such as fundamental social and
economic reforms, would await the end of the war. There were, however,
significant differences among the liberals of the new government and they
were deeply divided, especially on the two issues of the war and relations
with the Soviet. Many, symbolized by P. N. Miliukov, the Kadet Party
leader and foreign minister, were staunchly committed to continuing the
war and strongly opposed the role the Petrograd Soviet was playing in
affairs. They became the effective right wing of the new politics. At the
same time a more centrist viewpoint quickly emerged which stressed
cooperation with the more moderate socialists of the Soviet as well as
a willingness to consider a way out of the war other than by total vic-
tory. The key members of this grouping were the new minister-president,
Prince G. E. Lvov, the left Kadet N. V. Nekrasov, and A. I. Konovalov,
leader of the small Progressist Party. These were men for whom party
labels were less important than a set of shared attitudes toward the polit-
ical and social issues of the day. This loosely defined center-right bloc
quickly came to dominate the first Provisional Government.
The parallel realignment on the left among socialist parties was a
continuation of a political recasting that had begun earlier in argu-
ments among socialists about cooperation with the liberals and over their
response to the war. The revolution intensified those issues. Two return-
ing political leaders with fundamentally different responses to these issues
and conflicting programs of revolutionary action by the Soviet, Irakli
Tsereteli and Vladimir Lenin, drove the realignment on the left and
Soviet policies.
Tsereteli returned from Siberian exile on March 20 and led a group
which forged the Menshevik–SR led bloc of “moderate socialists” under
the banner of “Revolutionary Defensism.” Composed of the bulk of
the SR and Menshevik parties plus smaller groups such as the Bund
and Popular Socialists, this bloc dominated the Petrograd Soviet until
September and the Moscow Soviet and most provincial city soviets until
about the same time or later. The key to the Revolutionary Defensist
bloc’s identity and success was the war issue. With its combination of an
active program for obtaining a negotiated general peace and defense of
the country until that could be achieved, Revolutionary Defensism struck
a responsive chord in the country and especially among soldiers. It also
accepted cooperation with the government and thus was able to forge
a working arrangement with the center-right Lvov–Nekrasov–Konovalov
group. Indeed, although the moderate socialists saw February as the
first step in a much more sweeping social as well as political revolution,
they also foresaw the difficulties of an immediate socialist revolution and
looked toward an indeterminate but prolonged process. They therefore
entered into a working arrangement with some of the liberals for a centrist
coalition that they hoped would provide temporary political stability as
well as major if limited political and social-economic gains. The price,
however, was compromise and temporization on issues ranging from
the war to land distribution and workers’ aspirations. As a result the
Revolutionary Defensists soon came under attack from the radical left,
which called for a more rapid and sweeping revolution.
The Revolutionary Defensist leaders of the Soviet and the Lvov–
Nekrasov–Konovalov bloc in the government had much in common,
despite the socialist/nonsocialist division and their disagreements on
many specific issues. These men were all members of the small, edu-
cated, politically active sector of Russian society and shared many values.
They easily spoke the same language of national unity, faith in “the
people” and the worldwide significance of the revolution. Their shared
values and tacit understandings facilitated cooperation and laid the foun-
dation for the political coalitions and “coalition mentality” that domi-
nated political life until the October Revolution. The overall result of
this realignment and centrist cooperation was a new political and gov-
ernmental system, what one might call the “February System,” based
on multiparty blocs and quite different from that which anyone would
have predicted. This led, from May to October, to a series of “coalition
governments,” i.e., governments based on a centrist bloc of liberals and
moderate socialists that united “all the vital forces of the country,” even
at the expense of long-held party programs. Moreover, a similar political
realignment took place in the major provincial cities, making it a national
phenomenon.
Alexander Kerensky soon became the linchpin of the coalition system.
Originally the lone socialist in the government, he quickly joined with
the men from the liberal tradition who made up the new center-right
Conclusions 289
around Lvov. Kerensky was the mildest of socialists, however. He stood

at the point where moderate socialism blended into the left wing of the
liberals and thus was a perfect symbol of the emerging political center
and of coalition politics. Kerensky became the essential man, the political
hinge on which hung the two wings, left and right, of the new political
alignment. This set it up for him to move from being a key member
of the Lvov bloc in the first cabinet of the Provisional Government to
being, by summer, the government’s commanding figure. Kerensky’s
popularity, even cult, was important because the removal of Nicholas as
symbolic as well as actual head of the country, plus the breakdown of
coercive power of the state in 1917, created the need for someone with
strong personal authority who could symbolize the revolution and state.
Kerensky, constantly in the public eye, represented that for the first six
months of the Revolution.
The radical left bloc of the general political realignment emerged in
opposition to the Revolutionary Defensists, the Provisional Government
and the centrist coalition. It was ill defined, disorganized and lacking
strong leadership until the return of major political leaders, mostly from
abroad. These included Vladimir Lenin of the Bolsheviks, Iulii Martov
among the left Mensheviks (Menshevik–Internationalists), Leon Trotsky
(who first joined the Interdistrictites and then in July the Bolsheviks)
and Mark Natanson and Maria Spiridonova of the Left SRs. Lenin’s
arrival on April 3 was especially important because it changed the tone of
politics. Here was a clear, consistent, and uncompromising opponent of
the February System. There were other hard critics, but Lenin differed in
two respects: his uncompromising and confident demand for a new order,
and the fact that, unlike other critics, he was the leader of a party that
could become both the institutional embodiment of his radical posture
and a vehicle for working toward the new revolution that he demanded.
As a result, even though Lenin was absent from Petrograd during the
three and a half months before the October Revolution, he remained a
major figure in political calculations, while “Leninist” and “Bolshevik”
became generic terms for radicalism regardless of party, catchwords for
the general demand for radical change.
The radical left – Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Menshevik-Internationalists,
anarchists and others – pressed for more rapid and more sweeping social
and economic reforms, demanded more vigorous efforts to end the
war, criticized the policies of the Provisional Government and Petrograd
Soviet leadership, and increasingly called for the Provisional Govern-
ment’s replacement by an all-socialist government based on the soviets.
Initially the radical left’s extremism was out of keeping with the mood
of optimism following the collapse of the autocracy. Their oppositional
stance, however, positioned these parties and groups to become the ben-
eficiaries of any failures of the government and Soviet leadership to solve
the many problems facing the country.
The centrist alliance and February System were tested first of all by
the debate over the war and the April Crisis. The war was perhaps the
single most important issue of 1917. Its continuation sapped the energies
and resources of the country and made it difficult to resolve any of the
other problems or meet popular aspirations. It absorbed the attention
of political leaders, stimulated broad popular discontent and provoked
the first political crisis of the revolutionary regime. The Petrograd Soviet
quickly called for an end to the war. This was in part a genuine desire to
end the war, but also reflected the extent to which Russian socialists saw
the Russian Revolution as an event of world significance. In the words
of the Petrograd Soviet’s appeal of March 2, the Russian Revolution was
not just a national revolution but “the first stage in a world revolution
which will end the baseness of war and bring peace to mankind.”3 In
contrast, Miliukov and many liberals remained committed to winning
the war and viewed the revolution as a domestic affair that did not affect
Russia’s foreign policy interests.
The socialists therefore launched a concerted attack on Miliukov and
the government’s war and foreign policy. This criticism undermined the
moral as well as physical authority of the first Provisional Government.
It also threatened to destroy the fragile political structure created by
the February Revolution. The political debate over peace revealed how
deeply felt was the popular demand for an end to the war, while the
street demonstrations of the April Crisis not only demonstrated popular
discontent but also raised the specter of civil war, one of the greatest fears
of 1917. As a result the more centrist wings of the liberals and socialists
came together to carry out a new political revolution from above in
which a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists replaced the original
Provisional Government on May 5.
The continued use of the name “Provisional Government” and Lvov’s
remaining as its head masked the revolutionary nature of the change.
The Petrograd Soviet had asserted its predominant power and its socialist
leaders now entered the government, something they had earlier refused
to do. They brought with them an agenda, however muffled, for a much
greater social transformation than the liberals could accept. This set the
stage for continued liberal–socialist conflict, only now within as well as
outside the government. Moreover, this restructured government proved
unable to deal successfully with the war or with the other problems
such as the economy. It had no way both to meet the often-conflicting
aspirations of the populace and hold the coalition together.
Conclusions 291
The effort of the centrists to guide the revolution was complicated

at the center by the existence of two authoritative political institutions,
the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. This created what
Russians at the time called dvoevlastie, dual authority. Although the coali-
tion government was supposed to end this, it merely transferred the
underlying political division to within the government while the institu-
tional dichotomy remained as well. This was because the dvoevlastie was
not only, or even essentially, an institutional division. Rather, it repre-
sented a deep social-political chasm in Russia that divided society broadly
into socialists versus nonsocialists, workers versus bourgeoisie, peasants
versus landlords, soldiers versus officers. Russians in 1917 saw the rev-
olution very much as a conflict along broad class lines and between the
nizy (lower classes) and verkhi (upper classes). Both found their aspira-
tions incompatible and, fueled by old and new grievances, they struggled
for control of the levers of power and, ultimately, of government author-
ity. They did so with full awareness that political authority was a tool for
advancing the interests of one group or another.
The dvoevlastie at the top found an echo throughout society in con-
flicts between new revolutionary organizations and established authori-
ties: soldiers’ committees against the army command system, local sovi-
ets versus city councils, factory committees against factory management
and nationalist movements against centralized government were only the
most important among a multitude of new popular organizations con-
testing authority with the government or other hierarchical authorities
(new or old). The assertiveness of the new popular organizations hol-
lowed out the government’s authority, central and local. At the same time
political power passed down to the localities, Russian as well as minor-
ity, and to the new popular organizations. Even within Petrograd the
Red Guards, city district soviets, unions, workers’ and soldiers’ commit-
tees, and other organizations appropriated authority to themselves and
ignored the government’s (and sometimes even the Soviet’s) orders. A
reality of mnogovlastie, multiple authorities, went far beyond dvoevlastie,
dual authority.
The problems facing the centrist coalition worsened in the summer.
The February Revolution had not automatically removed any of the
fundamental causes of the revolution except Nicholas and his govern-
ment. Underlying social and economic problems and the stresses of the
war remained. The population expected the Provisional Government to
solve these problems and to meet their aspirations, but it could not.
Many of the problems were beyond its control, just as many aspirations
were unattainable or mutually exclusive. Indeed, the continued deterio-
ration of the economy exacerbated already existent social tensions and
the division of society into antagonist social classes. The industrial work-
ers, seeing the gains of spring slip away, sought economic security, greater
control over their lives and other improvements that the economic con-
ditions simply could not provide, whatever the intentions of the govern-
ment. Major nationality groups clamored for autonomy and other rights,
becoming ever more assertive, threatening the political cohesion of the
state. The central government’s authority eroded in the provinces. At the
same time deteriorating social conditions – crime, public transportation,
food shortages, housing and other problems – reinforced the sense of
society falling apart.
Moreover, just as social and economic problems increased, the peace
program of Revolutionary Defensism stumbled. The attempt of the Revo-
lutionary Defensists to force a peace conference and general peace floun-
dered on the rocks of opposition from Russia’s allies. The government
and Soviet leaders then made a fateful gamble on a military offensive.
This undermined the political base of Revolutionary Defensism. The
latter’s popularity rested on being a program for defending the coun-
try while seeking a quick peace. This the soldiers could accept. As the
peace offensive bogged down, however, the coalition government turned
toward using the army for a military offensive. This the soldiers would
not accept. The basic argument that a military offensive would bring
peace nearer was flawed, born of desperation and wishful thinking. It
never convinced a war-weary populace. The offensive’s unpopularity,
compounded by its catastrophic failure, destroyed the prospects for the
success of Revolutionary Defensism and the centrist coalition. Workers,
soldiers and others turned toward arguments that stressed that they could
achieve peace and solve their other problems only through a new revolu-
tion that would produce a radically different government more attuned
to their needs. This belief came to be summed up by the slogan of “All
Power to the Soviets” – Soviet power. Whether such a soviet-based gov-
ernment could in fact solve their problems is another issue, and irrelevant
to the point that they did believe it in 1917. Their attempt to force the
Revolutionary Defensist leaders to accept Soviet power, and implicitly
more radical policies, led to the great popular demonstrations known as
the July Days.
The July Days have often been called a “dress rehearsal” for the Octo-
ber Revolution. In reality they were more like February than October.
The July Days, like the February Revolution, began as popular demon-
strations against the war, the economic situation and a government that
had lost credibility. Like February, the political parties were active in stim-
ulating discontent but did not plan the actual revolt. Rather, again like
February, some socialist political leaders, in the July case the Bolsheviks
Conclusions 293
in particular, stepped forward at the end to try to consolidate the popu-

lar revolt in the streets (unsuccessfully this time). The July Days and the
February Revolution (and the April Crisis), but not the October Revolu-
tion, were characterized by massive popular street demonstrations. Such
demonstrations were conspicuously absent in the October Revolution,
which began and concluded very differently. The similarity with October
rested primarily with the popularity of the demand that the Soviet take
full power and create a radical revolutionary government, and with the
prominent role played by Bolshevik, Left SR and anarchist agitators; it
is in this demand for Soviet power and the support from the radical left
that the July Days can be called a “prelude” to October.
July and August witnessed contradictory political tendencies. After the
July Days the newspaper headlines and editorials, focused on high poli-
tics, talked of a conservative political revival and a demand for “order.”
This turn to the right among political leaders led to the Kornilov Affair.
At the same time, however, the small news articles in the inner pages
of the newspapers chronicled a leftward drift as workers and soldiers
chose more radical leaders for their committees and organizations. The
July Days reflected genuine popular discontents and therefore the radical
left parties, including the supposedly discredited Bolsheviks, rebounded
swiftly among their worker, soldier and urban lower-class and lower
middle-class constituencies. These parties supported policies that coin-
cided with popular sentiments, such as opposition to the restoration of the
death penalty in the army and the demand for immediate peace and land
distributions. Moreover, they provided an explanation of why things had
not worked out as expected after February, blaming it on the continued
political dominance of the “bourgeoisie” and the economic domination
of capitalists and landlords. That argument resonated in the popular
mind. The radicals – Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Menshevik–Internationalists,
anarchists – articulated the demand for a sweeping change of government
and policy and registered rapid gains in worker, soldier and other popular
organizations, and even in elections for general city offices.
The moderate socialists, on the other hand, undermined their popular
support not only by failed policies, but also because of their opposition
to the ideas behind the slogan of Soviet power. By refusing to cham-
pion unreservedly worker, soldier and peasant demands and by oppos-
ing Soviet power, the Revolutionary Defensists implicitly questioned the
legitimacy of the new popular organizations – soviets, factory, soldier and
peasant committees and others – as political institutions. They saw these
as having important but limited roles at the present. The masses, in con-
trast, saw them as having a very great present role and could not see any
reason why it should not be expanded to include political authority. At
the same time the Revolutionary Defensists’ involvement in the coalition

governments put them in an impossible situation, pushing them away
from the more revolutionary aspects of their belief system and toward
the politics of compromise in the name of the country’s good. They
became more accommodating to multiparty, multiclass, all-Russia pol-
itics just as the worker and soldier masses were becoming less tolerant
and less accommodating to such politics and more supportive of radical,
exclusionary politics and social policies.
While cataloging the failures of the Provisional Government and
Revolutionary Defensists, we should not lose sight of their successes
and, indeed, of the radicalism of the Provisional Government and the
“moderates” in 1917. The Provisional Government introduced sweep-
ing reforms, especially but not only in civil rights and freedoms. These
were truly remarkable when compared with what had existed in Russia
only weeks earlier, and even compared with the world at the time. They
attempted to create a democratic and more egalitarian society based on
the rule of law rather than arbitrariness, and a political system based
on elections and the popular will rather than autocracy or authoritar-
ianism. In a short time and under difficult conditions the Provisional
Government introduced major judicial reforms and steps toward rule of
law, legalized trade unions and the eight-hour day, began to work on
major land reform, set up universal elections to a Constituent Assembly,
declared Polish independence and took steps toward revisiting the con-
stitutional status of major ethnicities, and introduced religious freedom
and secularization, among other actions.4 Importantly, it gave women the
right to vote, the first of any major power to do so, and women entered
the public area in unprecedented ways and numbers. Their reforms seem
timid only in comparison to the even greater demands of an impatient
populace and the extraordinary radicalism of Bolshevism and the initial
decrees of the Soviet government after the October Revolution. By mea-
suring the Provisional Government against Bolshevism, we measure it
against the most radical political party (except anarchists) not only in
Russia but perhaps in the world in 1917. That creates a peculiar distor-
tion in evaluating the Provisional Government. This is even more the
case if one considers the Revolutionary Defensists and the “moderate
socialists.” They were hardly moderate by any normal measurement of
European socialism of the time, much less in comparison to Russian
society before 1917. They were staunch socialists and advocates of a
sweeping social-economic transformation that put them on the radical
edge of European and world thought of the time. It is only in compar-
ison to the Bolsheviks and their own left wings that they are seen as
moderate. Nor should we forget the dilemma of a government or parties
Conclusions 295
committed to sweeping change while preserving some sense of political

and social stability, creating democratic institutions and confronted by
an all-consuming war. That is a balancing act of the utmost difficulty in
the best of times, and these certainly were not that.
The Revolutionary Defensist leaders, having failed in their peace pol-
icy, unable to satisfy popular aspirations and tarnished by the Kornilov
Affair, found it impossible to keep control of either the soviets or the
Provisional Government. The former began to slip away in August and
moved out of their hands even faster in September, while the latter
became virtually Kerensky’s personal regime. The centrist coalition disin-
tegrated, but neither the moderate socialists nor the liberals could find an
alternative and so clung desperately to the idea of coalition government.
“Coalition,” however, was becoming a source of popular hostility toward
the parties supporting it. The urban and soldier masses, thoroughly dis-
illusioned with the February System and fearing the loss of the initial
gains of the revolution, sought a leadership committed to more explic-
itly class-based goals, one that would use the government’s resources to
help them fulfill their aspirations to the exclusion of rival claimants. At
the same time the radical left parties leveled a scathing criticism of the
government and Revolutionary Defensist leadership and waged a battle
for influence in the mass organizations, especially those of the workers
and soldiers – the soviets, committees, unions.
The radical left, itself a product of the political realignment of spring
and finding its voice especially in the Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Menshevik–
Internationalists and anarchists, now moved to take power. At first, in the
optimistic early period of the revolution, their radicalism had marginal-
ized them, but soon they were giving voice to popular frustrations and
promising a more certain fulfillment of the aspirations of the revolution-
ary masses. They now presented their own visions of a new and more
radical revolution. They pressed for rapid and radical action on the main
political and social issues and criticized the inactivity of the coalition
government and the moderation of the Revolutionary Defensists. They
promised to satisfy fundamental aspirations and endorsed the deepening
of social antagonisms as both legitimate and a way to resolve problems.
This led to a dramatic surge in popular support for the radical left in the
summer and fall that swept them into power under the unifying slogan
of “All Power to the Soviets” – Soviet power.
In an ongoing process of debates, agitation and reelection of deputies
and leadership in soviets, unions and committees, the left bloc replaced
the moderate socialists as the leaders of more and more of these popular
organizations. This process has traditionally been described as a series of
Bolshevik victories and that is a tempting shorthand for what was in fact a
much more complex political situation. The Bolsheviks were only a part,
the leading part as it turned out, of a larger radical left bloc that included
the Left SRs, Menshevik–Internationalists and anarchists. Many of the
resolutions and electoral successes traditionally termed “Bolshevik” were
in fact the result of Left SR activity or of the left bloc. Critical to the rise of
the left was the capture of the Petrograd Soviet. This gave the Bolshevik-
led left bloc control of the most important political institution in Russia
and put them in a position to move to take governmental power. Since
they had consistently argued for some kind of all-socialist or soviet-based
government, the takeover of the Petrograd Soviet – and of the Moscow
and some other city soviets – naturally posed the question: “What are the
Bolsheviks planning?”
There is little doubt but that the new leaders of the Petrograd Soviet
were planning to use the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets to declare
a transfer of power. The Bolshevik leaders in particular discussed this
extensively in party councils and in venues such as the CSNR. There
both the more adventuresome demands of Lenin and the cautious appeals
of Kamenev and Zinoviev were bypassed in favor of implementing the
vastly popular slogan of Soviet power, with the forthcoming congress
as the vehicle for achieving it. Such a step would be revolutionary in
that it involved overthrowing the existing Provisional Government, and
it was in this sense that people talked of a new revolution or a seizure of
power. The Left SRs and Menshevik–Internationalists also believed the
time had come for some type of new, all-socialist government, through
the Congress of Soviets if not through some earlier agency such as the
Democratic Conference or other agreement among party leaders. Nor
was there any doubt but that such a move would be widely popular and
that Red Guards and other activists were preparing to enforce that action.
In this scenario the Congress of Soviets would catapult the Bolsheviks
and radical left into governmental power, where they would be able
to try to carry out the political and social-economic projects that they
did, after all, believe in. Their criticism of the moderates was not merely
opportunistic. Belief and opportunity dovetailed nicely for the Bolsheviks
and other radicals in late 1917.
Nor is there much doubt that the government and other political lead-
ers expected such an attempt to take power. Kerensky appears to have
been almost anxious for the Bolsheviks to make a move, foolishly confi-
dent that he could crush them and end the threat. The moderate socialists
looked on in dismay, still locked in the belief that a Bolshevik attempt
to take power would merely open the door to a successful conservative
counterrevolution. Some on the political right agreed with this interpre-
tation, but looked forward to it with hope. The question by mid-October
Conclusions 297
seemed to be not so much would the Bolsheviks and their allies attempt
an overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Congress of Soviets,
but what would be the details of the process? What would be the exact
nature of the new government? To what extent and how successfully
might Kerensky’s government resist? Would this spark civil war?
The answer to the question of what would be the result of a declared
assumption of power at the Congress of Soviets can never be known,
because Kerensky’s ill-considered move against Bolshevik newspapers
the morning of the 24th opened the way for a transfer of power before
the congress. All along Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd had been warning
Lenin that the workers and soldiers would not come out on behalf of
an action by the Bolsheviks, but would in defense of the Soviet and the
Congress of Soviets. On October 24–25 they did exactly that. By the
time the congress met on the evening of the 25th, power had already
been effectively transferred by the workers and soldiers rallying to the
defense of the revolution and Soviet against “counterrevolution,” capped
by Lenin taking advantage of that to proclaim the seizure of power before
the congress opened.
In the midst of this seemingly inexorable course of events, the sup-
porting roles of chance and of individual human action are striking. Had
the old Revolutionary Defensist leadership not postponed the Congress
of Soviets from October 20 to October 25, the Bolsheviks and their
allies and supporters would have been even less prepared to take power
than they were five days later. A seizure of power before a Congress
of Soviets meeting on October 20 would have been virtually impossible
even had they intended one (which they did not): the preparations were
not there. Nothing resembling the confrontation of the Military Revo-
lutionary Committee with the military authorities on October 21–23 or
the psychological and physical preparation for revolution that took place
during the “Day of the Petrograd Soviet” on October 22 was planned or
possible in the days before October 20. Yet those were essential to any
transfer of power, and were key events in the October Revolution that
happened.
More critically, the October Revolution would not have commenced
nor ended as it did without Kerensky’s decision on the 24th. It was
Kerensky’s attack on Bolshevik newspapers that forced the issue of Soviet
power before the congress met, galvanized its supporters and gave Lenin
the revolution which he otherwise had little hope of getting. Indeed,
Kerensky’s action had more to do with the launching and outcome of the
October Revolution than did Lenin’s own unsuccessful attempt to plot
a Bolshevik seizure of power before the Congress of Soviets. Kerensky’s
blunder provoked the armed struggle that transferred power before the
congress met. This changed the nature of the transfer of power and
altered the role of the Congress of Soviets and the essential character
of the revolution. It gave Lenin the seizure of power before the congress
that he had so long, and unsuccessfully, demanded. Kerensky, not Lenin,
began the October Revolution. It allowed Lenin to turn a revolution for
Soviet power into a Bolshevik Revolution.
Moreover, once the congress opened Lenin found himself the recipient
of yet another unpredictable stroke of luck: the walkout of the moderate
socialists because of the armed struggle in the streets that Kerensky’s
action had provoked and that Lenin had seized upon to proclaim Soviet
power. That walkout left the Bolsheviks in a majority rather than merely
a plurality. Therefore Lenin could proceed relatively unhindered in the
steps of the next few weeks, exercising his iron determination to hold
power in the face of pressures to share and compromise.
Given the opposition from both the Left SRs and the Kamenev-type
moderates within the Bolshevik Party to many of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s
authoritarian measures in the days after October 25, one could speculate
on a very different outcome had the transfer of power come as a result of a
vote at the Congress of Soviets for a multiparty, all-socialist, Soviet-based
government. Without the prior street conflict and the resulting Lenin-
inspired declaration of the seizure of power on the morning of the 25th,
before the Congress of Soviets met, the congress would have performed
quite differently. There would have been no grounds for the walkout by
the Menshevik and SR moderates, ever larger portions of which were
moving toward accepting some form of all-socialist government. Had
they remained at the congress and participated in formation of a new
Soviet-based, all-socialist government structure, it would have been a
very different government from the one formed after their walkout (and
presumably the future of Russia would have been different as well). The
October Revolution was a complex mixture of powerful long-term forces
moving toward a radical government of some type and of unpredictable
events of the moment that shaped its specific form and outcome.
Central to understanding the October Revolution is recognizing that it
was carried out in the name of Soviet power, of “All Power to the Soviets.”
Popular support for it was based on an assumption that such a change
of government would allow fulfillment of aspirations for peace, workers’
supervision, land distribution, nationality autonomy and other demands.
The extensive popular support for Soviet power and the Bolsheviks, Left
SRs and other radicals in the fall of 1917 cannot be doubted. Ever since
1917, however, there have been repeated efforts to deny that, primarily
for political reasons. Some Russian opponents simply were unwilling to
acknowledge the erosion of their own support and its shift to the radicals,
Conclusions 299
a view taken over into much Western writing on the revolution. Others
later tried to deny that the Bolsheviks had widespread popular support
in 1917, suggesting that to accept it is to legitimize the dictatorship and
Stalin system that followed. Such arguments are transparently wrong.
The Bolsheviks (and Left SRs) did have widespread popular support in
the fall of 1917; that the Bolsheviks lost large portions of it in 1918 and
that they soon became dictatorial does not negate the fact of support in
October 1917. Nor does the fact that much of their support in 1917 was
for a concept of Soviet power very different from what later developed
in the Soviet Union nullify the reality of that support. Neither, on the
other hand, does the fact of popular support for Soviet power in 1917
legitimize the dictatorship that later emerged. Extensive popular support
for the Bolsheviks and Soviet power, especially in the urban centers and
the army, was a reality of 1917, without moral implications pro or con
for regimes created later in different circumstances.
Events after the October Revolution, in contrast, had a much greater
influence on the nature of the regime to follow. Lenin now faced the
daunting task of turning Soviet power into Bolshevik power. Although
that would be completed only in the cauldron of civil war, it was the
early efforts by the Bolsheviks to do so that not only consolidated their
tenuous grip on power but transformed the revolution into civil war and
the regime into a dictatorship. The immense popularity of the idea of
Soviet power allowed the new government both to handily defeat the
initial armed opposition and to witness the successful spread of Soviet
power across much of Russia and through the army by the beginning
of the new year. However, the meaning of Soviet power and the pur-
poses of power had not yet been fully defined. Only with difficulty did
Lenin overcome a serious effort during the first week after the October
Revolution to force him to share political power through a broad multi-
party socialist government, which it had been commonly assumed Soviet
power involved. He did form a temporary coalition with the Left SRs,
bringing them into the government in a minority role on December 9,
which allowed a temporary popular sense that it was a “multiparty” gov-
ernment as well as providing some valuable support in a difficult period.
At the same time Lenin and Trotsky worked to polarize opinion and par-
ties and to strengthen the Bolshevik hold on power. They did this in part
through swift movement to meet popular aspirations by the land decree,
the armistice, extension of workers’ authority in management of facto-
ries and other measures. At the same time they tightened control through
censorship, the formation of the Cheka, repressive measures against the
Kadet Party and other actions to suppress opposition. Thus began the
descent toward dictatorship and civil war.
The final act in marking the end of the revolution and the onset of
civil war was the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. The elections
to the Constituent Assembly and its forthcoming convocation kept alive
the notion not only of a future broad multiparty socialist government,
but a sense that Lenin’s government was only another temporary – pro-
visional – government. This muted early physical opposition to the new
government. It also presented Lenin and the radical left with their great
dilemma. Throughout 1917 they had criticized the Provisional Gov-
ernment for delay in convening the Constituent Assembly. Indeed, the
Bolsheviks had argued that only Soviet power could guarantee that the
assembly would meet. The Constituent Assembly was for most political
leaders the goal of the political revolution and the supreme authority
through which the people would speak authoritatively on social as well
as political issues. For Lenin, however, it became an obstacle to retaining
political power.
As predicted, the elections in November gave the Bolsheviks only about
a quarter of the seats, while the SRs held a majority. However unstable
that SR majority might be, it would control the Constituent Assem-
bly in its opening stages. Any government coming out of the assembly
would be a coalition, probably the broad socialist coalition that the slogan
“All Power to the Soviets” was thought to mean. Lenin had successfully
evaded precisely such a socialist coalition thus far. Accepting it meant
yielding power, and this Lenin was unwilling to do. His unwillingness led
him and other Bolsheviks and some Left SRs to denigrate the assembly’s
importance and to prepare action against it. This came on January 6
when the Constituent Assembly was forcibly closed after one meeting.
Dispersal was not essential for maintenance of a socialist government, or
even “Soviet power,” but it was if Lenin and Trotsky were to hold power
and for such a radical government as they envisioned.
Dispersing the Constituent Assembly was one of the most fateful deci-
sions Lenin was ever to make. The results for the Bolsheviks, Russia and
the world were of a significance almost impossible to exaggerate. For the
Bolsheviks, in the immediate situation it appeared merely that they had
avoided a serious threat to their hold on power. More fundamentally,
however, it revealed that the party had irrevocably set itself upon the
course of dictatorial rule and that those members who had protested that
tendency in November had given up their “constitutional illusions,” as
Lenin derisively called them. The party would cling to power at any price
and take the road of authoritarian government and dictatorship.
The consequences for Russia were even more profound. By this act
Lenin and his party announced clearly that they were abandoning the
long-held intelligentsia commitment to the people’s right to express
Conclusions 301
through the ballot their wishes on fundamental political issues. More

specifically, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was an announce-
ment by the Bolsheviks that they would not give up governmental author-
ity peacefully, via elections, but could be removed only by force. To the
misfortune of millions of people, this meant that civil war was inevitable.
The Bolsheviks’ declaration that they could not be voted out of office
meant that their opponents, of whatever political persuasion, could no
longer carry on a merely political struggle within the context of the revo-
lution of 1917. They either had to retire permanently to the sidelines or
take to the field with arms. The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly
effectively marked the end of the Russian Revolution of 1917; a brutal
civil war would now decide the fate of Russia.
Nor was that the end of it, for the long-run repercussions were equally
great. On January 6 the Tauride Palace witnessed not merely the end
of the Russian Revolution, but the destruction of the democratic and
constitutional hopes that had fitfully resided there since 1906 and which
appeared to have finally been realized in the heady days of spring 1917.
The Bolsheviks’ decision to abandon the electoral politics of 1917 and
rule by force laid the foundations of the political culture of the Soviet
Union. The legacy of this decision still haunts post-Soviet Russian society
in its struggles to revive the democratic hopes of 1917.
Moreover, the outcome of the Russian Revolution profoundly affected
the entire globe via the enormous and varied influences the Soviet state
and communism had on the world in the following decades. The extent
to which the later Soviet Union was shaped by the revolution or by other
events of Russian history are still vigorously debated. Yet, there can be
no doubt but that the path toward dictatorial government taken by the
Bolsheviks and their supporters in the winter of 1917–18 sent Russia and
the world on a very different historical route than if a more democratic,
pluralistic regime had emerged from the Russian Revolution of 1917.

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11 Conclusions

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of concurrent and overlap-

industrialists’ associations, householders’ associations, economic coop-

(unsuccessfully), and played an important role in Kornilov’s defeat in

around Lvov. Kerensky was the mildest of socialists, however. He stood

The effort of the centrists to guide the revolution was complicated

in particular, stepped forward at the end to try to consolidate the popu-

the same time the Revolutionary Defensists’ involvement in the coalition

committed to sweeping change while preserving some sense of political

through the ballot their wishes on fundamental political issues. More

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