Reluctant Rulers in Russia, February to October 1917

Nobody really ruled Russia between the February and October Revolutions of 1917.

A governmental and legal vacuum opened in Russia in 1917 with the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in the February Revolution. Neither the Provisional Government nor the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies showed much enthusiasm in establishing themselves as rulers of the country. This power vacuum lasted until the October Revolution when the Bolsheviks seized power in the name of the Soviets.

Historians usually emphasize the following conflicts between the February and October Revolutions.

1. The conflict between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet.
2. Conflicts between the Provincial Government and workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors, and ethnic minorities.
3. Party conflicts on different levels in the Provisional Government and Soviet:
(a) Conflicts between the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks intertwined with conflicts between the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet.
(b) Conflicts between Kadets and Mensheviks and SRs in the Provisional Government after April when moderate Mensheviks and SRs entered the Provisional Government.
(c) Conflicts between Mensheviks and SRs and Bolsheviks in the Soviet.
(d) Conflicts within the SRs and Mensheviks between rightist, centrist, and leftist factions. Bolsheviks had their own internal conflicts which Vladimir Lenin often managed to overcome.

Thanks to the lack of effective rule, the Russian Empire became a gigantic Utopia or an anarchist entity. The word Utopia comes from the Greek utopos which means nowhere or no such place. With the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Empire became the former Russian Empire. Only on September 1 1917 did the Provisional Government declare the country to be a republic.

Thus, for six months, some 150 million people owed their allegiance to nobody and nothing. They were no longer subjects of Tsar Nicholas II and of the Russian Empire. At best, they could be described as residents of the former Russian Empire. Only on September 1 did people become citizens of the Russian Republic and, by then, society had disintegrated along many different lines. And even this status as citizens was only temporary because only the Constituent Assembly could decide if Russia was to be a republic or monarchy. Thus, residents of the former Russian Empire became temporary citizens of a temporary Russian Republic. And this added to the general unwillingness of people to show any respect for the Provisional Government because provisional meant only temporary.

Bureaucrats had administered the Russian Empire since the reign of Peter the Great. With the abdication of Nicholas II, two bodies, dominated respectively by the liberal intelligentsia and the socialist intelligentsia—the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet ruled the former Russian Empire from the February Revolution to the October Revolution. However, both the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet were made up of people reluctant to rule and make decisions.

The Provisional Government—dominated by liberals from the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats, Party of the People’s Freedom)—saw itself as acting only in a caretaker role until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. This meant that decisions on the continuation or ending of the war, giving land to the peasants, control of factories to workers, autonomy or independence to the ethnic minorities had to be postponed until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly or the end of the war. Provisional means temporary and the Kadets along with their Socialist Revolutionary (SR) and Menshevik coalition partners in the Provisional Government intended the government to be only temporary. Unfortunately, calling the government provisional did not inspire respect for it among the population, particularly when authority was collapsing on every level in Russia. [1, 360) Who would possibly want to obey orders from a temporary government?

Then why did not the Petrograd Soviet take power after the February Revolution and enact what workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors, and ethnic minorities wanted? The problem was that SRs, Mensheviks, and most Bolsheviks regarded the February Revolution as a bourgeois revolution and saw the Provisional Government as the bourgeoisie in power. A long stage of capitalist development was necessary before a socialist revolution was possible. [1, 331]

This was how revolutions had happened in Europe, especially in France, and this was how it would happen in Russia. A premature socialist revolution would only lead to the triumph of a counter-revolution and the possible return of the monarchy. Thus, the Petrograd Soviet would be vigilant and make sure that the Provisional Government enacted necessary reforms.

Spelled out in practice, this meant that the socialists want to have the right of surveillance over the Provisional Government and the right to criticize the government’s actions without taking on the responsibility of ruling the country.

Stages of history could not be skipped even though most Russian socialists since the 1840s had been eager to skip the long stage of capitalist development and avoid seeing Russia turned into another liberal, bourgeois, constitutional European state. Marxist dogma on the historical process of revolution had sharply influenced the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, and the SRs.

As early as 1901, Joseph Stalin had spelled out what was the purpose of capitalist development and bourgeois rule.

<< To unite all the participants in this movement a banner is needed, a banner that will be understood and cherished by all and will combine all demands. Such a banner is one inscribed: Overthrow the autocracy. Only on the ruins of the autocracy will it be possible to build a social system that will be based on government by the people and ensure freedom of education, freedom to strike, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom for nationalities, etc., etc. Only such a system will provide the people with means to protect themselves against all oppressors, against the grasping merchants and capitalists, the clergy and the nobility; only such a system will open a free road to a better future, to the unhindered struggle for the establishment of the socialist system. >> [2]

For Stalin and nearly all Russian socialists, the political democracy of the stage of bourgeois development was useful only in that it would create the necessary conditions for a socialist revolution. Democracy was never an end in itself for Russia’s socialists.

Thus, both the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet were led by different groupings of the intelligentsia, the most politically advanced sector of educated society. The overthrow of Tsar Nicholas turned them from an opposition stratum into a political ruling class. However, the liberals and socialists of the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet between the February and October Revolutions of 1917 probably constituted the most reluctant rulers in the history of European revolutions. Too many elements of their political past shaped their behaviour in 1917.

For generations, the intelligentsia had furnished thousands of liberal and socialist activists eager to combat the tsarist regime and to suffer hard labour, exile, and even death in its goal to liberate the people. What happened in 1917 was that the intelligentsia could not break with one of its key pre-1917 traditions—criticizing the government without having to take responsibility for its own actions. The intelligentsia had become an opposition establishment quite happy to criticize every sector of government and society and to force everybody in the Russian Empire to play by its rules. Since it had acquired great experience in criticizing the tsarist government, the political parties and movements—which were entirely intelligentsia-led movements—deluded themselves that they could function just as easily as perpetual critics of the Provisional Government, the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks, and the anti-Bolshevik governments.

This legacy of the past paralyzed Russia’s liberals and non-Bolshevik socialists in 1917 and shaped their actions in the years of the Civil War.

References

1. Figes, Orlando. A people’s tragedy, the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
2. Joseph Stalin. The Russian Social-Democratic Party and Its Immediate Tasks,

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1901/11/x01.htm