Russian Revolution History and Facts

Revolutionary movement which brought down the tsarist regime in February 1917 and which, after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, resulted in the establishment of the Russian Socialist Soviet Federative Republic (January 1918).

IMPORTANT DATES OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917

(The dates in parentheses are those of the Old Style Russian calendar.)

1. RUSSIA, WAR AND REVOLUTION

1.1. REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY

The revolution of 1905 clearly posed the question of power, but the popular masses mobilized for the establishment of freedoms were abandoned by the bourgeoisie and crushed.

MENSHEVIKS

For the Mensheviks – strictly Marxists – Russia must experience a 1789 in order to gain access to the modern capitalist state, a necessary condition for the development of a large proletariat, which will subsequently take charge of preparing for the revolution. socialist. They defend the idea of ​​two stages of the revolutionary process

THE BOLSHEVIKS

The Bolsheviks draw opposite conclusions from the failure of 1905: for Lenin , the bourgeoisie proved incapable of carrying out the bourgeois democratic revolution; it is up to the Russian proletariat, with the support of the peasantry, to carry out both the tasks of the democratic stage and the transition to socialism . The socialist revolution can emerge directly from the accomplishment of bourgeois democratic political tasks through the “democratic revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”.

Trotsky also thinks that, “in an economically backward country, the proletariat may find itself in power sooner than in an advanced capitalist country”, but he diverges from Lenin and the Bolsheviks on the role of the peasantry (less important in their opinion). eyes) and denounces the maintenance of two stages in the course of the revolution (theory of the “permanent revolution”).

But the Bolsheviks, theoretically ready for the revolution, have not yet really drawn from 1905 the most important consequences, those which bear on the form of popular power. Lenin did not realize the importance of the Soviets – a concrete form of the insurrection in 1905 – until the beginning of 1917.

1.2. FROM THE NEAR MIDDLE AGES TO RUSSIAN CAPITALISM

The position of the Mensheviks, the hesitations of the Bolsheviks in 1917 can be explained by the properly medieval character of the political situation in Russia at that time:

• dictatorship of the noble bureaucracy, the police, the army and the Orthodox Church ;
• submission of the imperial family to the influence of a Rasputin (suspected, with the influential coterie led by the empress of German origin, of preparing a separate peace with Germany and of knowingly opening the territory to the enemy invasion);
• importance of the rural population (85% of Russians live in the countryside), which collectively owns, in the archaic form of communal land ownership, the mir , only
• infant mortality and famines; cultural backwardness; etc.
• “Nowhere in Europe is there such a wild country,” wrote Lenin.

However, a capitalist system is slowly forming. Since 1906 ( Stolypin’s reform ), a new category of peasant owners has appeared, the kulaks . Especially modern industry (coal, petroleum, metallurgy) has developed, placing Russia fifth among industrial nations in the world. But it is in the hands (85% for mines, 50% for metallurgy) of foreign capital (French, German and Belgian). There are already 3.5 million workers, highly concentrated (the Putilov factory in Petrograd has 24,000 workers).

1.3. WAR BREEDS REVOLUTION

The Russian Empire, trying to escape its contradictions by war, will come to an end.

The army, essentially peasant (9 soldiers out of 10), suffered heavy losses (900,000 prisoners in 1915). It is expensive, which triggers inflation and the food supply crisis at the end of 1915. The weapons are lacking on the front and strikes are numerous in the towns. Even the bourgeoisie denounces, through the mouth of the industrialist Pavel Pavlovich Riabushinsky, “a government which is not up to the task”.

The majority of the Mensheviks, following the example of the Western Social Democrats, support the sacred union of the Russians in the war effort. Lenin, on the contrary, made himself the apostle of “revolutionary defeatism”, declaring, as early as November 1914, that “the transformation of the current imperialist war into a civil war is the only right proletarian slogan”.

FEBRUARY 2, 1917

2.1. WINTER 1916-1917

The winter of 1916-1917 marks the height of the crisis: the cold is intense and everything is lacking in the cities; prices go up 25% in three months; the strikes, which were very popular in October (nearly 200,000 strikers), resumed in January; desertions are increasing within the army.

The bourgeoisie is preparing to eliminate Tsar Nicolas II for the benefit of his brother Michel. The ambassadors of France and Great Britain favor the plot. Rasputin was assassinated on December 31. Three Presidents of the Council follow one another in two months.

The “Russian office of the Central Committee” of the Bolshevik party was organized in 1916. Under the leadership of A. G. Chliapnikov and Molotov , it decided to organize a general strike with demonstration on January 21, 1917. That day, the a third of the workers in Petrograd (name given to Saint Petersburg since 1914) went on strike, but the protests against the war and the high cost of living were a failure.

The douma (the legislative assembly) was suspended by the Tsar until February 27. The Mensheviks, who want to unite workers and bourgeois against Tsarism, decide on a demonstration of support for the reopening of the Duma by demanding the formation of a government “of national salvation”. This slogan the Bolsheviks refuse; they call, for their part, to demonstrate the 26 on their own program. The two days are relatively successful.

STRIKES AND DEMONSTRATIONS

But, the 1 st March, bread is rationed. The city only has flour reserves for ten days. Following an attempted strike, the Putilov factory was closed. On March 8, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, strikes and demonstrations for bread and peace multiply in the suburbs; women are particularly active there. On March 9, the demonstrations resume; the workers come up against the police, who shoot. On March 10, the demonstrators arm themselves by looting the police stations. The Tsar and the General Staff send safe troops to Petrograd. While the demonstrators, discouraged, return home, the government triumphs, proclaims a state of siege, orders the dismissal of the Duma, without taking into account the appeal that its president, Mikhail Rodzianko, had the day before ,

PARTIAL RALLYING OF THE ARMY

At this time, none of the revolutionary parties – neither the Bolsheviks, nor the Mensheviks, nor the Social Revolutionaries – is ready to take the slightest initiative. But on March 12, two regiments joined the workers in the suburb of Vyborg. The rallying of part of the army is essential: it allows the arming of the workers (40,000 rifles are taken from the arsenal). The city is in the hands of the insurgents . The Tsar having dissolved the douma on March 11, it elects a provisional committee for the restoration of order.

However, as in 1905, a Petrograd Soviet was formed, formed by the Mensheviks, on the basis of one representative per 1,000 workers. The Bolsheviks rally to it. The soviet appoints a provisional executive committee, which includes Labor Aleksandr Kerensky , Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The soviet recognizes the legitimacy of the government; this recognition is however accompanied by a condition: it supports the government only insofar as it applies a democratic program which will have its agreement. This compromise marks the birth of a double power , the coexistence, punctuated by conflicts, of two different conceptions of the legitimacy and of the future of Russian society.

2.2. END OF THE TSARIST MONARCHY AND THE FIRST PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

A commission for supplies is created, the detainees are released and the official buildings (including the Winter Palace) are occupied. We are raising a workers’ militia. On March 14, Soviets were created in Moscow and in the provinces. The Tsar abdicated on March 15 in favor of his brother the Grand Duke Michael, but the latter renounced the throne. It is the end of the Tsarist monarchy.

On the same day, the moderate deputies of the Duma form a provisional government, chaired by Prince Gueorgui Lvov , surrounded by a majority of eminent representatives of the Constitutional Democratic Party or KD (Pavel Milioukov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikolai Nekrasov, Minister of Transport, Andreï Chingarev, Minister of Agriculture) and of the Octobrist party which brought together the right wing of the liberal movement (Aleksandr Goutchkov, Minister of War and Navy). Kerensky, vice-president of the Petrograd Soviet, the main architect of the compromise between the latter and the Duma committee, is Minister of Justice. Nicolas II and his family were arrested a few days later and placed under house arrest.

The provisional government establishes democratic freedoms. The workers played a decisive role with the peasant soldiers, but their political expression remained hesitant, even in the Soviet. The bourgeoisie has apparently seized power.

3. FEBRUARY-OCTOBER

3.1. THE DOUBLE POWER

At the beginning of March, the Petrograd Soviet launched the famous “prikaz No. 1  “, a judgment which placed military units under its control and that of the soldiers’ committees. From March 19, the provisional government, on the contrary, reminds the soldiers that they owe obedience to the officers. The prikaz n ° 1 is canceled. There are in fact two powers, not because of the soviet’s opposition to the government – the Menshevik majority supports this – but because of the existence, alongside bourgeois power , of an embryo of popular power .

The position of the Bolsheviks themselves is not clear: after a first denunciation of the government, the Petrograd committee decides to support it “as long as its acts correspond to the interests of the proletariat”.

The return of the deported leaders –  Kamenev and Stalin – brought about an alignment with the Menshevik positions on the continuation of the war. The Petrograd Soviet adopted, on March 14, a text (Appeal to the peoples of the whole world) in which the pacifist utopia rubs shoulders with “revolutionary defensism”. Indeed, he calls on the peoples to “lead a decisive fight against the annexationist ambitions of the governments of all countries at war […] to impose a peace without annexations or contributions”. But he affirms, at the same time, that “Russia will continue the war, preserving the combativeness of the army for active operations”. A Bolshevik conference takes this position.

3.2. LENIN’S “LETTERS FROM AFAR”

Lenin, however, sent four “Letters from afar” to Pravda from Zurich to combat these conciliatory tendencies.

In his Letters, he demands to keep the Bolshevik party out of any coalition and demands an immediate break between the Soviet and the government  ; thus, he wishes to move on to the active preparation of the “next, proletarian phase” of the revolution. Lenin wrote: “The second revolution […] must shift power from the hands of the big landowners and capitalists […] to the hands of the workers and peasants. “The Pravda dare publish only the first of these letters.

Decided to return to Russia, Lenin accepts the agreement concluded by the Swiss Social Democrat Platten with the German authorities, who, knowing well the political strategy of the Bolsheviks, counted on the destabilizing force of the socialist discourse among a Russian population already hostile to the continuation of the war.

With a group of revolutionaries, Lenin left Zurich on March 28 to cross Germany, in an armored car enjoying the status of extraterritoriality, and reached Sweden, then Petrograd. Welcomed by the Petrograd Soviet, he took the opposite view of the officials and greeted the “world proletarian vanguard”.

3.3. APRIL THESES

Taking up the themes of the Letters from afar , these famous theses were presented by Lenin in mid-April 1917 to the Bolshevik group of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Their content divides the Bolsheviks. The “old Bolsheviks” (Kamenev, Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov [1881-1938]) oppose Lenin’s theses and affirm: “Ahead of us there are gigantic revolutionary tasks, but their achievement will not lead us beyond the bourgeois system. “

Kamenev – along with the majority of Bolshevik leaders – will only accept a publication of the April theses as a personal article by Lenin in Pravda . They are the first assertion of the revolutionary program of October:

• 1 st thesis: No concessions to the national defense policy.
• 2nd thesis: “The distinctive feature of the current situation in Russia consists in the transition from the first stage of the revolution, who handed over power to the bourgeoisie […] at its second stage, which will transmit power in the hands of proletariat and the poorest layers of the peasantry. “
• 3rd  thesis: No support for the Provisional Government.
• 4th thesis: The Bolsheviks are still a tiny minority.
• 5th  thesis: The task of the Bolsheviks is to explain to the masses that “the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is the only possible form of revolutionary government.” And Lenin adds: “We don’t want the masses to take our word for it. We are not charlatans. We want the masses to stand out from their experience of their mistake. “. The suppression of state bodies (army, police, bureaucrats…) stems from the power of the Soviets. Elected and revocable officials receive a worker’s salary.
• 6 th  thesis: Nationalization of land handed to the Soviets.
•  7 th  thesis: Nationalization of banks.
•  8 th  thesis: soviet control over production and distribution.
•  9 th  thesis: Change of the term social-democrat to that of communist.
•  10 th  thesis: Creation of a revolutionary International.

Welcomed with skepticism, Lenin’s theses nevertheless progressed, with the gradual rallying of Bolsheviks returned from exile ( Zinoviev , Aleksandra Kollontaï ) or of “minorities” from Petrograd (Stalin, Chliapnikov). But it was the April crisis, which divided the provisional government and the Soviet on the essential question of war, which helped to make the Leninist position in the Bolshevik party triumph and which led the latter to conquer the Soviets.

3.4. THE CONQUEST OF THE SOVIETS

THE PROBLEM OF WAR

For the government, only a victory would succeed in anchoring the new regime firmly to Western democracies, consolidating the cohesion of society, and, perhaps, putting an end to the revolution.

The 1 st  of May, Pavel Milyukov , Minister of Foreign Affairs, proclaimed its intention to pursue the war to a “victorious end.” On May 3 and 4, demonstrations mark popular opposition to this decision. For the first time, some demonstrators chant Bolshevik slogans: “Resignation from the government, all power to the Soviets!” “Violent clashes pitted the Bolsheviks against the counter-demonstrators (officer cadets, young bourgeois and notables from the upper classes) who set up a tribunal to try” the German spies and Lenin “. A wind of civil war is sweeping over Petrograd. But, the government having publicly announced that Russia was not considering any annexation, the crisis seemed, on the evening of May 3, defused.

SECOND PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

The government, reshuffled to eliminate Miliukov, includes Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, whom nothing separates. This coalition government looks very much like a fool’s bargain . The moderates, for their part, intend to bind the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries together by their participation in governmental responsibilities and in the conduct of war, while using their conciliatory influence on the masses; the Socialists, for their part, hope to obtain reforms and an end to hostilities, while thwarting counter-revolutionary projects.

In this second provisional government, laboriously constituted, on May 5, after weeks of negotiations, the moderates of the Constitutional Democratic Party retained the presidency (which went to Prince Lvov) and seven portfolios, while the Socialists obtained six. By their political stature, three Socialists, prominent members of the Soviet – a Menshevik (Tseretheli, Postmaster General and leading theorist of revolutionary defensism) and two Social Revolutionaries (Chernov, Minister of Agriculture, and Kerensky, Minister of War and of the Navy) – dominate the new cabinet.

THE EXACERBATION OF SOCIAL TENSIONS

The massive entry of socialist ministers into government calls into question the very principle of dual power. The lines of cleavage no longer pass, as in the early days of the revolution, between the Soviet and the government. As conciliation wins at the top of the state, social and national tensions are heightened.

Bolsheviks criticizing any “class collaboration”, workers assembled in their factory committees, peasants seizing seigneurial lands without waiting for the Constituent Assembly to meet, bosses determined to resist workers’ pressure, non-native populations demonstrating their desire for independence – all are determined to act, regardless of the calls for moderation by the conciliators in power. Isolated, they take time to succeed.

On May 7, the All-Russian Conference of the Bolshevik Party met, which, despite strong opposition, adopted Lenin’s theses. Trotsky and his friends will join the Bolshevik party on these new bases.

As tensions and difficulties accumulate, the Bolsheviks increase their pressure , encourage workers’ radicalization, enter in force in the factory committees of Petrograd. Minority in the unions and the Soviets, they acquired the majority in May at the Petrograd Factory Committee Conference, developing the idea of ​​”workers’ control”. Lenin, with the help of Trotsky, works to set up the revolutionary party which will be the instrument of the seizure of power.

THE FORCIBLE SEIZURE OF POWER BY THE SOVIETS

In order for the persistent duality of power to benefit the revolutionaries, it was important, Lenin thought, to detach the Soviets from the government and therefore, for the Bolsheviks, to gain the majority there. It is a question of the proletariat ceasing voluntarily restraining its power; the change of majority within the Soviets, a condition for the seizure of power, must be carried out peacefully, but must result in the seizure by force of all power by the Soviets.

It was only for the first step that Lenin envisioned a peaceful course – since then widely reinterpreted as “peaceful passage to socialism”. A program, adopted at the beginning of May, “bread, land and peace”, and a means of action, the Soviets: the Bolsheviks are therefore in a position to claim power. This is what Lenin does, to everyone’s surprise, at the opening of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets on June 16.

While the Bolsheviks are still very much in the minority (a hundred out of over eight hundred delegates), they take the offensive, demanding that the Congress transform into a Revolutionary Convention and assume full power. Tseretheli having affirmed that there was no force which could supplant the government, he attracted a repartee which remained famous from Lenin: “Such a party exists. No party has the right to refuse power and our party does not refuse it. He is ready at any time to take the power in his hands. “

3.5. JULY-OCTOBER

Kerensky had decided an offensive at the front for the 1 st  July the Soviet Congress, still dominated by Mensheviks, decided the same day a demonstration in Petrograd to support the coalition government, but the majority of demonstrators chanted the words of Bolshevik order. For the first time, the street belongs to the Bolsheviks . This event marks the final split of the Russian socialist camp.

THE KRONCHTADT UPRISING

The problem of the war was the catalyst for the revolutionary days of July 3 and 4, a key moment in the 1917 process. On the 2 came the news of the failure of the Broussilov offensive, which gave way to the German counter-offensive; a certain number of regiments in Petrograd, favorable to the Bolsheviks and who feared being sent to the front, decided to prepare an insurrection.

Overwhelmed, the leadership of the Bolshevik party allowed demonstrations to develop which degenerated when soldiers, sailors from Kronchtadt and militant workers went to the Tauride Palace (seat of the provisional government) to ask – in vain – the Soviet to ensure power.

The government called on the Cossacks and troops brought back from the front. In the city under siege, the army disperses the demonstrators. These July days, which ended in fifty deaths, led to the arrest of many Bolshevik leaders (Trotsky, Kamenev). As for Lenin, he hides with Zinoviev in Finland, where he writes the State and the Revolution .

REVOLUTIONARY SALVATION GOVERNMENT

Kerenski becomes President of the Council. It forms a “government of revolutionary salvation”, in which the constitutional democrats, who have come back in force, and the moderate socialists (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries) coexist as best they can, united by their hatred and their fear of the Bolsheviks.

Since the July days, the political climate has changed dramatically. From now on, the conservative pressure groups – the Society for the Economic Renaissance of Russia, bringing together major industrialists and bankers close to the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Union of Large Landowners or the Union of Army and Fleet Officers – occupy the first row in the aisles of power.

The VI th  Congress of the Bolshevik Party, however, opens on 8 August. The Central Committee, elected then and which represents 240,000 militants, includes Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev… It will prepare the insurrection, since the peaceful path is now blocked.

ATTEMPTED COUP BY GENERAL KORNILOV

At the beginning of September, General Lavr Korlinov’s attempted coup took place .

Of all the generals of the Ancien Régime, this son of Cossack peasants was the only one to make Republican remarks and to declare himself in favor of a certain democratization of the army. At the same time, he had brought order to the troops, banning meetings while in command of the southwestern front, and having the deserters shot. Faced with the weakness of the civilian government, Kornilov quickly emerged as the man of recourse for the high command, the employers’ circles, even the Allies, all the more worried about the chaos which was gripping Russia as the pacifist theses progressed within their ranks. own troops.

The consultative state conference – a sort of “States General” which brings together in Moscow, from August 12 to 20, representatives of employers, unions, professional groups, officers, churches and political parties (Bolsheviks excepted) – turns to the confrontation between Kerensky and Kornilov , greeted by the cheers of the conservatives. Firmly supported by the Constitutional Democrats, Kornilov sets out his program to get Russia out of the crisis: dissolution of all revolutionary committees, end of all state intervention in the economic and social fields, militarization of railways and factories. armament, reinstatement of the death penalty in the rear … From that moment the prospect of a military coup began to emerge.

Supported by the corps of officers and by the conservatives, Kornilov demanded, on August 26, a cabinet reshuffle. While the KD ministers resign, Kerensky, released, dismisses Generalissimo Kornilov from his functions. But the latter, who had already set August 27 as the date of his coup, is advancing his troops on Petrograd. In the test of strength which began, the Bolsheviks soon manifested their ”  revolutionary solidarity” with the government .

Denouncing the putsch, the Bolsheviks created a network of “revolutionary war committees” to organize the resistance. Their experience of going underground is proven. By disrupting transport and propaganda among Kornilov’s troops, they were preventing the Generalissimo’s advance, while in Petrograd, where Kerensky received Soviet support, the city was put in a state of defense. Its leaders released, the Bolshevik party made a spectacular comeback on the political scene.

The armed uprising in Petrograd, on which Kornilov was counting, does not take place; his troops trampled, demoralized, near the capital, facing those who remained loyal to the government. In two days, the putsch was reduced to nothing and General Kornilov was arrested. “Without the Kornilov putsch,” Kerensky would later say, “there would not have been Lenin. “

RISING SOCIAL UNREST

Be that as it may, on the political level, the failure of the putsch reverses the situation all the more so as the situation in the country is deteriorating more and more.

Social unrest mounted first in the country  : from 1 st September to 20 October, he remained trace 5140 “law violations”, a figure probably much lower than reality, but revealing enough scope agrarian disorders. Particularly numerous in Ukraine, Belarus and especially in five provinces of central Russia (Toula, Ryazan, Penza, Saratov, Tambov), these disturbances are increasingly violent: the peasants are no longer content to seize the land, they plunder , burn down the stately homes by the hundreds.

In the cities too, the social climate is hardening: to respond to increasingly harsh strikes, with sequestration of bosses, business leaders often stop production.

The gloomy economy , shortages spread, prices soared (they tripled between July and October), hundreds of thousands of workers found themselves unemployed, claiming workers’ control over production and, more and more often, resignation of the government and the passage of all power to the Soviets.

However, not very many workers joined the Bolshevik party, which had less than 200,000 members at the beginning of October 1917. It was rather a conquest by Bolshevism of large sections of society, disillusioned by politics. of a government that had not ceased to urge patience, that the authorities assist, powerless.

But, in the institutional vacuum of the autumn of 1917, Lenin’s conception of an organized and determined party allied to Trotsky’s tactical know-how are assets which will prove to be decisive.

OCTOBER 4, 1917

4.1. HESITATIONS ON THE INSURGENCY

From September, Lenin judged that there were only two paths left: “Either all power remains in the Soviets […] or else Kornilovism. “

He wrote to the Central Committee to take advantage of the meeting (at the end of September) of a “democratic conference” convened by Kerensky to expose the Bolshevik program and announce, in the event of a refusal – foreseeable – of this program, the insurrection. The majority of the Central Committee is opposed to Lenin, and, while the “democratic conference” designates a “Preparation”, a Bolshevik conference decides to participate in this new body, in which the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries are in the majority.

Kerensky forms a new government, while the food crisis begins again. The Germans threaten Petrograd. From Finland, Lenin wrote to the party that it was necessary to start the insurrection without waiting for the Congress of Soviets, scheduled for November. Faced with the persevering wait-and-see attitude of the Central Committee, he offered his resignation. Barely – 9 votes to 8 – the Central Committee, worked on by Trotsky and Stalin, decided to boycott the “Preparatory”. Trotsky denounces this “new duma [which], under the orders of the counter-revolutionaries and the imperialists, is preparing the surrender of Petrograd and the defeat of the revolution”.

But the Bolsheviks are still not preparing for an uprising. Lenin, in disguise, returns to Petrograd (suburb of Vyborg). He managed to convince, after ten hours of discussion, the majority of the members of the central committee of the need for an armed insurrection , the principle of which was approved by ten votes to two (those of Zinoviev and Kamenev). The minority hostile to the decision made an almost public criticism of it, thus warning the provisional government.

However, no practical measures were taken before October 16, the date on which an enlarged central committee met, which voted on a text calling for insurrection. The Bolsheviks create a Revolutionary Military Center responsible for organizing the practical modalities of the uprising.

For his part, on October 9, Trotsky prompted the establishment of a military organization emanating from the Petrograd Soviet, of which he is the president: the Petrograd Revolutionary Military Committee (CMR), which he also chairs. The CMR quickly established its ascendancy over the troops and listed them at Smolnyï headquarters: red guards workers, sailors, soldiers from the garrison and from the northern front.

4.2. INSURRECTION

The showdown began on November 4 (October 22 in the Russian calendar at the time), when the Petrograd garrison rallied to the Petrograd RMC, which it recognized as the sole authority. The Bolsheviks say that only the II th  All-Russian Congress of Soviets – not a Democratic convention – will be entitled to legitimize a new government.

On November 6 (October 24), RMC posted a proclamation in Petrograd. Kerensky gathers his troops (officer cadets, a few regiments) around the Winter Palace. The “Preparation” takes refuge in neutrality. Moscow is also preparing for the insurrection.

In Petrograd, the bridges cut by the general staff were re-established by the RMC troops. The troops at the front refuse to march or are too far away.

Lenin, still fearing procrastination, leaves his refuge in the suburb of Vyborg and settles in Smolnyï to control the progress of the insurrection. On the night of November 6-7 (October 24-25), the Bolsheviks occupied the official buildings . The cruiser Aurora threatens the Winter Palace, which Kerensky abandons for the front, in search of reinforcements and troops loyal to the government.

While the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet opens, then, in the evening, that of the Congress of Soviets, the cruiser Aurora bombs the Winter Palace , which is taken on November 8 (October 26) in the morning. The Congress of Soviets – the “Preparation” having been dissolved during the day – announces, in an appeal, the advent of the new power.

The debates were violent: after having condemned the “military conspiracy organized behind the backs of the Soviets”, part of the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries left the room under the boos of the Bolsheviks and the murderous eloquence of Trotsky (“Go where you must be: in the dustbins of history! ”). The former ministers are prisoners, and all power belongs to the Soviets, and therefore to the Bolsheviks, who have a small majority (343 out of 675 delegates to the congress). The revolution has not killed 200 people, perhaps a thousand since March.

4.3. BOLSHEVIK POWER

The Council of People’s Commissars , headed by Lenin, the central organ of the new power, was formed on November 8 (October 26). In order to constitute it, it was necessary to fight against tendencies to compromise with the other socialist parties, strong tendencies even within the Bolshevik party. In the evening, Lenin speaks at the Congress of Soviets. Greeted with a huge ovation, he said simply: “Now we turn to the building of the socialist order. On his initiative, two decrees were then adopted, on peace and on land, which inaugurated the application of the Bolshevik program.

The situation is still difficult. General Petr Krasnov threatens Petrograd, and fighting is underway in Moscow and in the provinces; the officials of the ministries go on strike against the new power; the railway workers’ union, the Mensheviks, the Petrograd municipal duma appeal to the provinces against the Bolsheviks.

To maintain itself – abroad, it is not given three days to live – the power of the Soviets will have to wage a long and bloody civil war .

5. THE “OCTOBER MODEL”

The October Revolution, the first modern revolution, was for Lenin and Trotsky only the prelude to the European revolution. The failure of this one made October an isolated model. The strategy of the workers’ movement remained for many years suspended from the interpretation of the Russian revolution: the revolution must be permanent according to Trotsky  ; it will be carried out in stages according to Stalin . The share of hesitation at crucial moments, the truly obsessive role of Lenin show how little October has held up to, how dangerous it is to reduce it to a schema; if Lenin has shown the same determination throughout, it is often against a majority within his party.

Nothing is therefore more false than the image of a party leading the masses from start to finish along a flawless line: in February, the insurrection is more spontaneous than desired by the Bolsheviks; in October, Lenin forces the hand of the Central Committee because he feels that the masses are ripe.

The social differences between the Russia of 1917 and the advanced capitalist countries of today or even the countries of the “third world” make the idea of ​​an “October model” fictitious.

6. SOVIET PROPAGANDA AND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

Historians have now clearly shown that the October uprising was led by determined men, but without real popular support, with the exception of the sailors of the October cruiser . This state of affairs went against the principles of Marxism-Leninism and in particular the idea of ​​mobilizing crowds behind the Bolsheviks. So Soviet propaganda wanted to build the myth of an October revolution supported by the masses.

Cinema has played a major role in this process. In 1927, Sergei Eisenstein made, for the tenth anniversary of the revolution, the film October (or Ten Days That Shaken the World) . He called on the Red Army for the crowd scenes which would then pass – including in the West – as faithful reconstructions of reality. It was not until the 1960s that work began to reconstruct these events showing the weakness of the support of the masses of Petrograd in the fight of the Bolsheviks.