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ALEXANDER RABINOWITCH
the
BOLSHEVIKS
in POWER
THE FIRST YEAR OF SOVIET RULE IN PETROGRAD
THE
BOLSHEVIKS
IN POWER
THE
BOLSHEVIKS
IN POWER
THE FIRST YEAR OF
SOVIET RULE IN PETROGRAD
ALEXANDER RABINOWITCH
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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© 2007 by Alexander Rabinowitch
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rabinowitch, Alexander.
The Bolsheviks in power : the first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd / Alexander Rabinowitch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-34943-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia
rabochaia partiia (bol’shevikov)—History—Sources. 2. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History—
Revolution, 1917–1921—Sources. 3. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921.
4. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza—History—Sources.
5. Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich, 1870–1924. I. Title.
JN6598.S6R33 2007
947′.210841—dc22
2007007276
1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08 07
For Victor
Twin brother, best friend, global humanitarian
CONTENTS
ix
preface and acknowledgments
xvii
abbreviations
Prologue: The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in Petrograd
1
Part 1. The Defeat of the Moderates
1. Forming a Government
17
2. Rebels into Rulers
54
3. Gathering Forces
80
4. The Fate of the Constituent Assembly
104
Part 2. War or Peace?
5. Fighting Lenin
131
6. “The Socialist Fatherland Is in Danger”
7. An Obscene Peace
181
155
Part 3. Soviet Power on the Brink
8. A Turbulent Spring
213
9. Continuing Crises
237
10. The Northern Commune and the Bolshevik–Left SR Alliance
11. The Suicide of the Left SRs
283
260
Part 4. Celebration amid Terror
12. The Road to “Red Terror”
313
13. The Red Terror in Petrograd
330
14. Celebrating “The Greatest Event in the History of the World”
15. Price of Survival
389
chronology of key events
notes
selected bibliography
index
403
409
475
455
356
PR EFACE A ND ACK NOW LEDGMENTS
The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in October 1917. The regime
they established, which was dedicated to the universal triumph of communism, controlled Russian politics and society for more than seventy-five
years. It can reasonably be argued that this outcome, more than any other
single event, shaped world history for much of the twentieth century.
Most of my professional research and writing has been devoted to studying the October 1917 revolution and its immediate outcome in Petrograd,
now St. Petersburg, the capital of Imperial and revolutionary Russia. In my
first book, Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July Uprising (Indiana University Press, 1968), I explored the causes, development,
and results of the abortive July 1917 insurrection in Petrograd as a means of
clarifying the sources of popular dissatisfaction with the liberal/moderatesocialist Provisional Government, and the program, structure, method of
operation, and strengths and weaknesses of the Bolshevik party (in comparison with other contemporary political parties). In my next book, The
Bolsheviks Come to Power (1976), I utilized the insights provided by Prelude
to Revolution to better understand the nature of the October 1917 Russian
revolution, the reasons for the failure of Western-style democracy, and the
triumph of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Most fundamental, my goal in both
books was to study events in Petrograd as a means of addressing basic, then
inadequately studied, questions relating to the Bolsheviks and the course of
the October revolution.
The Bolsheviks Come to Power, together with Prelude to Revolution, challenged prevailing Western notions of the October revolution as no more
than a military coup by a small, united band of revolutionary fanatics brilliantly led by Lenin. I found that, in 1917, the Bolshevik party in Petrograd
transformed itself into a mass political party and that, rather than being a
monolithic movement marching in lock step behind Lenin, its leadership
was divided into left, centrist, and moderate right wings, each of which
helped shape revolutionary strategy and tactics. I also found that the party’s
success in the struggle for power after the overthrow of the tsar in February
1917 was due, in critically important ways, to its organizational flexibility,
x / Preface and Acknowledgments
openness, and responsiveness to popular aspirations, as well as to its extensive, carefully nurtured connections to factory workers, soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, and Baltic Fleet sailors. The October revolution in Petrograd,
I concluded, was less a military operation than a gradual process rooted in
popular political culture, widespread disenchantment with the results of the
February revolution, and, in that context, the magnetic attraction of the
Bolsheviks’ promises of immediate peace, bread, land for the peasantry, and
grass-roots democracy exercised through multiparty soviets.
This interpretation, however, raised as many questions as it answered.
For if the success of the Bolshevik party in 1917 was at least partly attributable to its open, relatively democratic, and decentralized character and operational style, as seemed clear, how was one to explain the fact that it was so
quickly transformed into one of the most highly centralized, authoritarian,
political organizations in modern history? Further, if soviets, in 1917, were
genuinely democratic, embryonic organizations of popular self-rule, as my
studies also suggested, how was it that the independence of soviets and other
mass organizations was destroyed so quickly? Most fundamental, perhaps,
if the goal of many of the dissatisfied lower-class citizens of Petrograd who
spearheaded the subversion of the Provisional Government and facilitated
the Bolshevik seizure of power was the creation of an egalitarian society
and a democratic-socialist, multiparty political system, and if this goal was
shared by many prominent Bolsheviks, as my research also showed, how was
one to explain the extraordinary rapidity with which these ideals were subverted and Bolshevik authoritarianism became firmly entrenched?
These are the key questions posed in this book. My efforts to complete
it have taken an inordinately long time, ironically partly because of the cultural liberalization begun by Mikhail Gorbachev. I had completed pertinent
research during trips to Leningrad and Moscow libraries by the early 1980s.
Well before Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, I had
begun drafting the main chapters. I was dissatisfied with the results, however, especially for the period after much of the non-Bolshevik press was
shut down during the first half of 1918, which eliminated one of my main
sources. Even the limited kinds of published documents on events, institutions, social groups, and political figures and parties, especially the Bolshevik party organization in Petrograd, that were crucial for my work on 1917
were unavailable for 1918. Thus, to complete this book, I needed access to
Soviet government and Communist party archives, which were then still
tightly sealed.
The first strong hint of the immense change that liberalization under
Gorbachev would have on my situation as a Western historian of the Rus-
Preface and Acknowledgments / xi
sian revolution and earliest Soviet period came in 1989, when The Bolsheviks
Come to Power became the first Western study of the revolution published in
the Soviet Union. I remember the presentation of the book in an auditorium
at the Progress Publishing House in Moscow as one of the most satisfying in
my life. All the same, even after the book’s publication in the Soviet Union,
the possibility that a “bourgeois falsifier” like me might soon have the opportunity to work in Soviet historical archives still seemed farfetched.
This changed abruptly in June 1991, when I went to Russia to do some
supplementary research in Moscow and Leningrad libraries. With the support of Soviet colleagues, I requested, and to my great surprise received, permission to work in government and Communist party archives in Moscow
and, a bit later, in Leningrad. Although it was immediately clear that some
materials of greatest interest to me remained classified, my potential source
base was now expanded immeasurably. Moreover, it grew even larger in 1993,
when I was first allowed to work in the former KGB archives, and also during the remainder of the 1990s, as an increasing number of documents was
gradually declassified. That was the positive side. The negative side was that,
for practical purposes, I had to begin my research over again.
A bibliography of the sources upon which this work is based can be
found at the end of the book. Important unpublished sources relating to the
first year of Soviet power in Petrograd that were available to me include minutes of meetings of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee for 1918, as well
as of other citywide party forums; minutes of meetings of Bolshevik district
party committees; protocols of meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom); stenographic records of key sessions of the Petrograd
Soviet and its leadership bodies; minutes of meetings of Petrograd district
soviets; internal memoranda; correspondence; unpublished memoirs; extensive records for other parties and government, administrative, and civic bodies; and the personal files of key Bolshevik leaders for this period. In addition,
I have been able to examine some, though by no means all, pertinent case
files of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage (VCheka), as well as those of local investigative agencies, for this period. Of similarly great value to me have been
meticulously annotated, comprehensive collections of previously classified
records pertaining to the history of political organizations other than the
Bolshevik party during the revolutionary and immediate postrevolutionary
eras published in Russia in the last decade and a half.
Taken together, these newly available sources have made it possible to
examine, for the first time, Bolshevik internal debates and decision making
in Petrograd from top to bottom, the development of party and government
xii / Preface and Acknowledgments
institutions and their relationship at all levels, and the evolution of popular
political opinion during the first year of Soviet power. Based on this analysis,
I have tried to reconstruct the dynamics of the earliest development of the
repressive, ultra-authoritarian Soviet political system against the backdrop
of Petrograd’s profound post-October political, economic, social, and military crises. My hope is that this reconstruction, however imperfect, will shed
useful new light on one of the central historiographical issues in early Soviet
history, namely, the relative importance of developing circumstances and responses to them as opposed to a preconceived Bolshevik revolutionary ideology or a firmly established pattern of dictatorial behavior, in shaping Soviet Russia’s highly centralized, authoritarian political system.
The Bolsheviks in Power is organized into four parts. Part 1 covers the
period from the October revolution to the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly in January 1918. During this time the Petrograd Bolsheviks consolidated power in Petrograd, and Lenin successfully stifled Bolshevik moderates who were dubious about prospects for early socialist revolutions abroad
and looked to a socialist friendly Constituent Assembly to further the revolution in Russia. The central focus of part 2 is the course and impact of the
fierce controversy over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a separate peace with
Germany, that began in January 1918 between a majority of leading Petrograd Bolsheviks and Lenin, and ended the following March with the advance of German forces to the very gates of Petrograd, the Soviet government’s frenzied flight to Moscow, and the treaty’s ratification. Part 3 explores
Petrograd’s catastrophic domestic and military crises during the spring and
early summer of 1918, responses to them by workers, and the ways in which
these crises shaped the Bolsheviks’ approach to government in what was now
Russia’s “second city.” This part concludes with an examination of the disintegration of the Bolshevik-Left SR alliance in the Northwest and the turn
to one-party rule in early July. In part 4 primary attention is devoted to the
Petrograd Bolsheviks and political developments in July–August 1918, leading to the proclamation of mass “Red Terror” in the fall, as well as on the
dynamics and impact of the Terror in Petrograd. The final chapter of part
4 focuses on the organization and staging of the grand celebration marking the first anniversary of the October revolution in Petrograd. The festivities are used as a vehicle for evaluating the condition, revolutionary hopes,
and self-identity of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, as well as the changed structure of Petrograd government, after twelve months of desperate struggle to
retain power until the eruption of expected, decisive socialist revolutions in
the West. Throughout the book, I focus on certain events and moments that
Preface and Acknowledgments / xiii
provide particularly illuminating insights into the answers to central, still
puzzling questions about the changed nature of the Bolshevik party and the
soviets following the October revolution, as well as the disparity between the
revolution’s initial goals and its early results.
* * *
The system of transliteration employed in this work is the one used by
the Library of Congress, with some simplifications, such as in the case of
well-known proper names (e.g., Trotsky, not Trotskii).
On 1 February 1918, Russia switched from the Julian calendar to the
Gregorian calendar of the West, which was then thirteen days ahead of the
former. Unless otherwise indicated, all dates in the text accord with the calendar in use in Russia at the time.
Over the many years I have worked on this book, so many people and
institutions have aided me in my work that it is impossible to express my appreciation to them all. My work on it could not have been completed without
generous support from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation;
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the International Research and Exchanges Board; the National Council for Eurasian and East
European Research; the American Council of Learned Societies; the Harriman Institute, Columbia University; the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and the Office of International Programs, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Indiana
University.
I am deeply grateful, as well, to the staffs of the Hoover Institution;
the New York Public Library; the Library of Congress; the Indiana University Library; the National Library, London; the International Contemporary
Documentation Library, Nanterre; the Russian National Libraries, Moscow
and St. Petersburg; the State Public Historical Library of Russia, Moscow;
the Institute of Scientific Information on the Social Sciences of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, Moscow; the Russian Academy of Sciences Library,
St. Petersburg; the State Museum of the Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg; the National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), Public Records Office (PRO); the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF);
the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI); the
Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TsGA SPb); the Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents, St. Petersburg (TsGAIPD); the Leningrad Oblast Archive in Vyborg (LOGAV); the Central State Archive of
the Military Naval Fleet, St. Petersburg (TsGA VMF); the Archival Admin-
xiv / Preface and Acknowledgments
istration of the Federal Security Service, the Russian Federation, Moscow
(AU FSB RF); and the Archival Administration of the Federal Security Service for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (AU FSB SPb i LO).
Beginning in the 1980s, my research and writing profited greatly from
interaction with historians in Moscow and St. Petersburg, especially Genrikh
Ioffe, Mikhail Iroshnikov, Viktor Miller, Albert Nenanorkov, Genadii Sobolev, Vitalii Startsev, Pavel Volobuev, and Oleg Znamenskii. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, contacts between Western and Russian scholars
have been normalized; as much as anyone, I have benefited from this welcome development. Beginning with my first days of work in the Leningrad
[Communist] Party Archive (now TsGAIPD), Irina Il’marovna Sazonova,
Senior Researcher and Archivist, and Taissa Pavlovna Bondarevskaia, Senior Researcher and Chief Archival Specialist, took me under their wing,
shared their vast knowledge with me, and aided my research in countless
other ways. Taissa Pavlovna, whose primary scholarly interests coincide with
mine, remains as generous to me today as at the start. The Petersburg Branch
of the Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, is blessed with a
group of distinguished historians whose interests also overlap with mine. At
the Institute, I am particularly grateful to Boris Ananich, Tamara Abrosimova, Vladimir Cherniaev, Raphael Ganelin, Boris Kolonitskii, Sergei Potolov, and Nikolai Smirnov for their encouragement, scholarly insights, and
friendship. Special thanks, as well, for their advice and assistance, to Barbara
Allen, Stanislav Bernev, Richard Bidlack, Nadezhda Cherepinina, Sergei
Chernov, Barbara Evans Clements, Pete Glatter, Leopold Haimson, Vladlen
Izmozik, Aleksandr Kalmykov, Svetlana Koreneva, Anatolii Kraushkin,
Carol Leadenham, Sergei Leonov, Iaroslav Leontiev, Moshe Lewin, Aleksei
Litvin, Nikita Lomagin, Vladlen Loginov, Andrea Lynn, Michael Melancon, Larissa Malashenko, Vladimir Naumov, Oleg Naumov, Michaela Pohl,
Toivo Raun, Anatolii Razgon, Larissa Rogovaia, Jonathan Sanders, Richard
Spence, Mikhail Shklarovskii, Stanislav Tiutiukin, Phil Tomaseli and Rex
Wade. Over the years, my students in the Department of History at Indiana
University have been a never-ending source of inspiration. I am also deeply
in their debt. Let me add that Mary McAuley’s pioneering study, Bread and
Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917–1922, has helped me to better
understand the broader context of which my work is a part. The same is true
of Donald J. Raleigh’s Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and
Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922; Peter Holquist’s Making War,
Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921; and Richard
Sakwa’s Soviet Communists in Power: A Study of Moscow during the Civil War,
1918–1921. A rich post-Soviet collection of essays edited by V. A. Shishkin,
Preface and Acknowledgments / xv
Petrograd na perelome epokh: Gorod i ego zhiteli v gody revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny, provided me with the stimulating insights of contemporary Petersburg historians of especially great interest to me.
Thanks are due to the staff of Indiana University Press for their thoughtfulness and efficiency in editing and producing my book. Last but by no
means least, it would not have been finished without the constant support,
encouragement, and invariably sound advice of my wife, Janet. She has read
and made suggestions for improvement of successive drafts of each chapter,
and they have been invaluable in revising them. I alone, of course, bear responsibility for shortcomings which remain.
A BBR EV I AT IONS
ACS
CEC
GPU
EAD
FSB
Kadet
kombedy
KGB
Komuch
Left SR
MRC
PCheka
PTK
SIS
SK PTK
SK SO
SNKhSR
SOK
Sovnarkom
SR
UDCA
VCheka
VSNKh
Vikzhel
All-Russian Committee for Salvation of the Homeland and
Revolution
Central Executive Committee
State Political Administration
Extraordinary Assembly of Delegates from Petrograd Factories
and Plants
Federal Security Service
Constitutional Democrat
Committees of the Village Poor
Committee for State Security
Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly
Left Socialist Revolutionary
Military Revolutionary Committee
Petrograd Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage
Petrograd Labor Commune
[British] Secret Intelligence Service
Council of Commissars of the Petrograd Labor Commune
Council of Commissars of the Northern Oblast (Region)
Supreme Council of the National Economy for the Northern
Region
Northern Oblast [Bolshevik] Committee
Council of People’s Commissars
Socialist Revolutionary
All-Russian Union for Defense of the Constituent Assembly
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage
Supreme Council of the National Economy
All-Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railway
Workers
THE
BOLSHEVIKS
IN POWER
Prologue: The Bolsheviks and
the October Revolution in Petrograd
To make sense of the evolution of the Bolshevik party in Petrograd during
the first year of Soviet rule, and the factors shaping the authoritarian, oneparty political system which emerged then, it is necessary to take account of
the results of the February revolution that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and,
even more, the character and makeup of the Bolshevik party in 1917 and the
dynamics of the October revolution which brought it to power.
The February 1917 revolution, which grew out of prewar political and
economic instabilities, technological backwardness, and fundamental social
divisions, coupled with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing
military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals
surrounding the monarchy, resulted in the creation of two potential national
governments. One was the officially recognized Provisional Government,
initially dominated by prominent liberals and, after April, by an uneasy coalition of liberals (primarily Constitutional Democrats or Kadets) and moderate socialists (most importantly, representatives of the moderate social
democratic or Menshevik party and of the agrarian Socialist Revolutionary
or SR party). The second was the Soviet—initially the Petrograd Soviet, created during the February revolution and, by mid-summer, national Soviet
executive committees: the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (CEC) and the All-Russian Executive Committee of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. Formed by national congresses representing a countrywide network of urban and rural soviets, these
national soviet bodies were politically stronger than the Provisional Government by virtue of their vastly greater and constantly growing support among
workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors.
Under the control of the moderate socialists, the national soviet executive organs recognized the legitimacy of the Provisional Government and,