Consistent Bolshevik message
Did Lenin’s April theses lead to a complete change of policy? Lars T Lih continues his series, arguing that the opposite is the case
Throughout 1917, the Bolsheviks delivered a consistent message to the soviet constituency: that is, the workers and soldiers who elected soviets in the capital cities of Petrograd and Moscow, as well as many other urban centres. The heart of this message can be stated concisely: an exclusive worker-peasant
vlast based on the soviets is the only way to effectively defend the revolution and carry out its goals.
Formulated in positive terms, the key implication of this message was: ‘All power to the soviets!’ Stated in negative terms, the key implication was
A curious case
Were the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Kamenev supporters of the Provisional Government and hostile to soviet power? Lars T Lih puts the story straight
Lev Kamenev was the
de facto leader of the Bolshevik Party for a few weeks in March and early April 1917, before Lenin’s return to Russia. Even after, he remained in the top leadership core of four or five persons. Yet he has gone down in history as someone whose outlook differed from Lenin’s in profound ways - as someone who was practically indistinguishable from a ‘moderate’ Menshevik; someone who supported the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government, denied that the war was imperialist, was hostile to the idea of soviet power, supported ‘revolutionary defencism’ and in general acted in non-revolutionary ways. Anyone who reads this article and the accompanying documentation will realise that this portrait is the complete opposite of the truth. A curious case, indeed!
One-liners
Unsigned editorial: ‘The Provisional Government and revolutionary social democracy’ (
Pravda March 14 1917)
vlast
The proletariat and the peasantry and the army composed of these classes will consider the revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full - when all remnants of the former regime, economic as well as political, have been torn up to their very roots. This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete
vlast [
vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this - to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.