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The First Proletarian Government
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Extract
My title is plagiarized from an article written by Trotsky's friend Adolf Ioffe for the second anniversary of the October Revolution.The ‘first proletarian government’ was not the Council of People's Commissars, approved by the Second Congress of Soviets at the time of the seizure of power ‘for the administration of the country up to the convening of the Constituent Assembly’, and described in the enabling decree as ‘the Temporary Worker and Peasant Government’. Before long the Council of People's Commissars (CPC), under Lenin's chairmanship, was indeed to become the key executive body in the Soviet regime, but some weeks were needed to acquire the necessary staff and procedures and even longer to establish effective control over the inherited machinery of administration and to convert it to the CPC's own purposes.
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References
1 A. Ioffe, ‘Pervoe proletarskoe pravitel'stvo’, Kommunisticheskii internatsional, No. 6, 1919, Col. 777–82.
2 Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, Vol. I (Moscow: Gos. izd. pol. lit., 1957), p. 20.Google Scholar
3 See Rigby, T. H., ‘Birth of the Central Soviet Bureaucracy’, Politics (Sydney), forthcoming.Google Scholar
4 No major study of the CEC is available in English. See Fedorov, K. G., VTsIK v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti 1917–1970 g.g. (Moscow: Gos. izd. iurid. lit., 1957)Google Scholar, and Kleandorova, M. V., Organizatsiia i formy deiatel’ nosti VTsIK 1917–1924 g.g. (Moscow: lurid, lit., 1968).Google Scholar
5 See Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1950), pp. 147–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 See Schapiro, Leonard, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 242–6.Google Scholar
7 The best Western account is in Pietsch, Walter, Revolution und Staat: Institutionen als Träger der Macht in Sowjetrussland 1917–1922 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1969), Chaps, IV and V.Google Scholar Pietsch's book offers a fuller treatment of the origins and pre-revolutionary character of the MRC, than is given here, and is extremely valuable for its discussion of relations between the MRC and other bodies. Except on some minor details Pietsch's interpretation of the available information is very close to that presented in this article.
8 Notably Podvoisky, N. I., ‘Voennaia organizatsiia TsK RS-DRP (b) i Voenno-revoliut-sionnyi komitet 1917 g.’, Krasnaia Letopis', Nos. 6 and 8, 1923Google Scholar and ‘Vospominaniia ob oktia-br'skom perevorote’, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, No. 10, 10 1922.Google Scholar See also Piontkovsky, S., ‘Voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet v oktiabr'skie dni’, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, No. 10 (69), 10 1927.Google Scholar
9 Of fundamental importance for the study of the MRC is the three volume documentary collection Petrogradskii Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet: Dokumenty i Materialy (Moscow: Nauka, 1966–1967)Google Scholar, edited by a team headed by D. A. Chugaev (referred to hereafter as Petrogradskii VRK). Also important are Belov, G. A., et al. , eds., Doneseniia komissarov Petrogradskogo Voenno-Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta (Moscow: Gos. izd. pol. lit., 1957)Google Scholar, Bol'shevistskie Voenno-Revoliutsionnye Komitety (Moscow: Gos. izd. pol. lit., 1958)Google Scholar, and Golikov, G. N. et al. , eds., Velikaia Oktiabr’ skaia Sotsialisticheskaia Revoliutsiia: Dokumenty i Materialy: Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Petrograde (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo akademii nauk, 1957).Google Scholar
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11 The enabling decision was taken after heated argument in the Executive at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet held on 9 October. (All dates are given here in accordance with the calendar then operating in Russia, which was 13 days behind the modern Western calendar.) In this initial phase it was referred to as a ‘Committee of Revolutionary Defence’. This decision was put into effect three days later at a closed meeting of the Soviet's Executive Committee, along lines broadly following proposals worked out in the Military Department meanwhile (Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. I, pp. 40–4).Google Scholar
12 See, e.g., Podvoisky, , in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 10, 10 1922.Google Scholar
13 This view of the relationship between the MRC and the Bolshevik Central Committee seems the only one consistent with the documents. See, alongside Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. I, Protokoly Tsentral’ nogo Komiteta RSDRP (B) 08 1917-sevral’ 1918 (Moscow: Gos. izd. pol. lit., 1958), pp. 80–123.Google Scholar The case for it is argued forcefully by Pietsch, Revolution und Staat, Chap. IV. Although the Central Committee on 16 October designated five of its members (Stalin, Sverdlov Bubnov, Dzerzhinsky and Uritsky) as a Military-Revolutionary Centre with instructions to join the MRC, there is no evidence that this group ever functioned; Trotsky, denied that it did (L. Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence (London: Hollis and Carter, 1947), pp. 232–3)Google Scholar, but the silence of the documents is perhaps more persuasive than his not unprejudiced testimony. There has been some confusion concerning Trotsky's own role. As Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, his benevolent oversight was an important condition for the MRC's effectiveness, but the evidence for his direct part in its activities is fragmentary and contradictory. For varied evaluations, see Deutscher, I., The Prophet Armed; Trotsky: 1879–1921 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 297–312Google Scholar; Daniels, Robert V., Red October: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1967), p. 217Google Scholar, and Trotskii, L., Moia Zhizn': Opyt avtobiografii (Berlin: Granit, 1930), Vol. II, pp. 41–9.Google Scholar While there is nothing to indicate that documents published in recent collections have been tampered with to minimize Trotsky's role, the possibility of still unpublished documents that would reveal a more directly active role cannot be excluded.
14 See Pietsch, , Revolution und Staat, p. 34.Google Scholar
15 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. I, p. 58.
16 Podvoisky, , in Krasnaia Letopis’, No. 8, 1923, p. 17.Google Scholar
17 See Trotzki, Leo, Von der Oktober-Revolution bis zum Brester Friedensvertrag (Belp-Bern: Promachos Verlag, 1918), pp. 53–4.Google Scholar The Bolshevik Military Organization disposed of a resource of great importance in the insurrection, namely the ‘Red Guard’ detachments of armed factory workers, which the Provisional Government had been forced to tolerate since General Kormilov's, abortive counter-revolutionary coup a few weeks earlier. Daniels's view (Red 10 , p. 217)Google Scholar that the MRC was essentially a ‘front’ for the Bolshevik Military organization has a considerable measure of truth for the period up to and immediately following the insurrection. It derives support from the testimony of some major participants, notably Podvoisky. Yet an emphasis on structures and their relationships can easily be misleading, given the constant structural flux and kaleidoscopic movement, overlap and configurations of personnel. One could equally view what happened as a takeover of the resources of the Bolshevik Military Organization by a group of Petrograd Soviet members, several of them non-Bolsheviks, and deployment of these resources along lines never effectively controlled by any formal Bolshevik Party body.
18 MRC headquarters was originally divided into seven departments: defence, supplies, communications, information bureau, workers’ militia, reporting section (stol donesenii) and commandant's office (komendatura): see Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 1, p. 41. On 20 October a department of revolutionary air services was added, and on 24 October a motor transport allocation section: see Piontkovsky, p. 116.
19 See Piontkovsky, pp. 121–8.
20 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. I, p. 9.Google Scholar
21 Gorodetsky, p. 117.
22 Piontkovsky, p. 133.
23 Piontkovsky, p. 128. Cf. Iroshnikov, pp. 152–4, 180–1.
24 Iroshnikov, pp. 67–9. Certain early CPC decisions, including even decrees appointing Deputy People’s Commissars, were issued under MRC letterheads, See Gorodetsky, p. 122.
25 Gorodetsky, pp. 122–8, Piontkovsky, p. 133.
26 Piontkovsky, p. 128.
27 See Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, Vol. I, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar
28 Gorodetsky, pp. 133–5, Piontkovsky, pp. 122,129.
29 Piontkovsky, pp. 131–2, Gorodetsky, pp. 119–22.
30 Gorodetsky, p. 120.
31 Ioffe, Col. 780.
32 Piontkovsky, pp. 122–5.
33 Gorodetsky, pp. 130–2; Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 2, p. 516.Google Scholar
34 Petrogradskii VRK, passim. Before the seizure of power the Petersburg Soviet also had a sledstvennaia komissiia, and this may simply have been taken over by the MRC (see Trotsky, , in Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia No. 10, 10 1922, p. 61Google Scholar). This body was sometimes referred to simply as the sledstvennaia komissiia. (See e.g. Petrogradskii VRK Vol. I, p. 456.Google Scholar) On November 15 it was proposed to entrust it with independent powers of arrest without reference to the MRC (Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, p. 5Google Scholar), but it is not clear from the documents whether this proposal was implemented.
35 See Bol'shevistskie Voenno-Revoliutsionnye Komitety,Parts II and III, and Kondrat'ev, V. A., ed., Moskovskii Voenno-Revoliutsionnyi Komitet Oktiabr'-noiabr’ 1917 goda (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1968).Google ScholarPetrogradskii VRK contains documents on Petrograd MRC contacts with twenty-eight military-revolutionary committees. These contacts demanded increasing attention from the MRC in the course of November and the importance assumed by MRC channels in controlling the provinces may be illustrated by a letter addressed to it by the Party Central Committee about 26 November, asking the MRC to supply arms for the support of the local Bolshevik committee in the Urals town of Nizhne-Tagil. See Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, p. 392.Google Scholar As early as the end of October MRC representatives were operating in many of the provinces of Russia proper, Turkestan and the Caucasus, assigned, inter alia, to forty-four major cities and 113 military units (Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, pp. 452–6Google Scholar).
36 Piontkovsky, p. 130.
37 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 1, p. 275.Google Scholar
38 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 1, p. 362.Google Scholar
39 Piontkovsky, p. 115.
40 Listed in Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, pp. 663–4.Google Scholar In addition the editors of this work have identified fifteen other persons referred to by historians or memoirists as MRC members, but without confirmatory evidence in the MRC documents.
41 See Piontkovsky, p. 115.
42 Gorodetsky, p. 115.
43 Apart from the Investigation Department, the most important departments set up after the insurrection were those for Food Supplies and Agitation. A vital role was played by the Bureau of Commissars, which was primarily responsible both for selecting commissars and co-ordinating their work in the post-insurrection period. See Petrogradskii VRK, passim.
44 Gorodetsky, p. 114, Petrogradskii, VRK, Vol. 3, p. 537.Google Scholar
45 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 1, pp. 58,408,532; Vol. 2, p. 277; Vol. 3, p. 285.Google Scholar There is also one reference in the available documents to a Presidium of the MRC, but we have no evidence as to its functions, and it was probably a very ephemeral body; see Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, p. 663.Google Scholar Cf. Gorodetsky, p- 114. Further on efforts to establish an effective decision-making nucleus, see Pietsch, , Revolution und Staat, pp. 60–1.Google Scholar
46 Trotsky's influence, evidently important in the initial phase of the MRC, seems to have come to an end after the defeat of Kerensky's attempted counter-blow. Following the insurrection, Lenin took a close interest in MRC activities (see, e.g., Piontkovsky, pp. 115–16), but the tendency of some writers to attribute to him a constant dominating influence (e.g., Gorodetsky, p. 110) finds little support in the available documents.
47 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 1, p. 198Google Scholar, Kramarov, G., Soldat Revoliutsii: O Sergee Ivanoviche Guseve (Moscow: Izd. pol. lit., 1964), p. 59.Google Scholar
48 Ioffe, Col. 780.
49 Gorodetsky, p. 142.
50 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, P. 5.Google Scholar
51 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, p. 349.Google Scholar
52 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, PP. 569–70.Google Scholar
53 Petrogradskii VRK, Vol. 3, p. 232.Google Scholar This presumably was the basis of Latsis's proposal at the CPC meeting four days later, referred to above.
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58 Burns, and Stalker, , The Management of Innovation, p. 6.Google Scholar The two models are explained at length in Chap. 6, and their characteristics summarized systematically on pp. 120–2.
59 It is somewhat surprising that more scholars have not recognized the relevance of Burns's and Stalker's findings and analysis for understanding political decision-making structures under conditions of stability or revolutionary change. One scholar who has is Thompson, Victor A. who, in his paper ‘Bureaucracy and Innovation’, Administrative Science Quarterly, X (1965–1966), pp. 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ountries and advocates an organic model of administration. See also Milne, R. S., ‘Mechanistic and Organic Models of Public Administration in Developing Countries’, Administrative Science Quarterly, XV 1970, pp. 57–67Google Scholar, where it is argued against Thompson that such countries lack some of the essential conditions for organic systems to be effective.
60 Pietsch, , Revolution und Staat, p. 44.Google Scholar
61 See Iroshnikov, and Rigby, ‘Birth of the Central Soviet Bureaucracy’.
62 The contrasts here were not of course absolute ones. While the MRC system was extremely organic, those evolved by the other bodies were never more than relatively mechanistic, and the CEC seems to have been a good deal less so than the CPC. The organic model, moreover, could be applied to the whole complex of institutions operating from Smolny, which to a large degree functioned as a single decision-making system during the initial periods. What might appear as ‘rivalry’ between these bodies is better seen as a struggle to emerge from this common matrix and establish boundaries for themselves. Even after the abolition of the MRC, much confusion remained over relationships between the CPC and CEC, as we have noted. An important influence on the character and development of the central organs of rule immediately after the revolution was exercised by Bolshevik relations with the other left-wing parties, particularly the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. There has not been space to consider this aspect here. The most pertinent treatment is in Pietsch, , Revolution und Staat, pp, 62–66Google Scholar and Chap, VI. See also Carr, , The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. 1, Chap. 5.Google Scholar
63 A number of recent comparative studies, however, have done much to advance our understanding of other aspects of revolutions. See especially Dunn, John, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Calvert, Peter, A Study of Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Leiden, Carl and Schmitt, K. M., The Politics of Violence: Revolution in the Modern World (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Carl, ed., Nomos VII: Revolution (New York: Atherton Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Janos, Andrew C., The Seizure of Power: A Study of Force and Popular Consent (Princeton: Princeton University Center of International Studies Research Monograph No. 16, 1964)Google ScholarGoodspeed, D. J., The Conspirators: A Study of the Coup d'Etat (London: Macmillan, 1962)Google Scholar; Gross, Feliks, The Seizure of Political Power in a Century of Revolutions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958).Google Scholar Of earlier works, the following in particular still reward study: Malaparte, Curzio, Coup d'Etat: The Technique of Revolution (New York: Dutton, 1932)Google Scholar; Pettee, George S., The Process of Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1938).Google Scholar
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65 Janos, The Seizure of Power.
66 Goodspeed, The Conspirators.
67 Leiden, and Schmitt, , The Politics of Violence, p. 63;Google Scholar see also p. 66.
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