 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom. Web address Mercuriospirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk, by Leon Trotsky. Introductory notes. In this book, Trotsky, until near the end, uses the Russian calendar in indicating dates, which, as the reader will recall, is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, now introduced in Russia. Two. The abbreviation SR and SRs is often used for social revolutionist, or social revolutionists, or social revolutionaries. Three. Maximalist often appears instead of Bolshevik, and minimalist instead of Menshevik. End of introductory notes. From October to Brest-Litovsk, by Leon Trotsky. Chapter One. The Middle Class Intellectuals in the Revolution. Events move so quickly at this time that it is hard to set them down from memory, even in chronological sequence. Neither newspapers nor documents are at our disposal. And vet the repeated interruptions in the Brett-Litovsk negotiations, create a suspense which, under present circumstances, is no longer bearable. I shall endeavour, therefore, to recall the course and the landmarks of the October Revolution, reserving the right to complete and correct this exposition subsequently in the light of documents. What characterised our party almost from the very first period of the Revolution was the conviction that it would ultimately come into power through the logic of events. I do not refer to the theorists of the party, who, many years before the Revolution, even before the Revolution of 1905, as a result of their analysis of class relations in Russia, came to the conclusion that the triumphant development of the Revolution must inevitably transfer the power to the proletariat supported by the vast masses of the poorest peasants. The chief basis of this prognosis was the insignificance of the Russian bourgeois democracy and the concentrated character of Russian industrialism, which makes of the Russian proletariat a factor of tremendous social importance. The insignificance of bourgeois democracy is but the complement of the power and significance of the proletariat. It is true the war has deceived many of this point and, first of all, the leading groups of bourgeois democracy themselves. The war has assigned a decisive role in the events of the Revolution to the army. The old army meant the peasantry. Had the Revolution developed more normally, that is, under peaceful circumstances, as it had in 1912, the proletariat would have held a dominant position, while the peasant masses would gradually have been taken in tow by the proletariat and drawn into the whirlpool of the Revolution. But the war produced an altogether different succession of events. The army welded the peasants together, not by a political but by a military tie. Before the peasant masses could be drawn together by revolutionary demands and ideas, they were already organised in regimental staffs, divisions and army corps. The representatives of petty bourgeois democracy scattered through this army and playing a leading role in it, both in a military and in a conceptual way, were always completely permeated with middle-class revolutionary tendencies. The deep social discontent in the masses became more acute and was bound to manifest itself, particularly because of the military shipwreck of Tsarism. The proletariat, as represented in its advanced ranks, began, as soon as the Revolution developed, to revive the 1905 tradition and called upon the masses of the people to organise in the form of representative bodies, Soviets consisting of deputies. The army was called upon to send its representatives to the revolutionary organisations before its political conscience caught up in any way with the rapid course of the Revolution. Whom could the soldiers send as deputies? Eventually, those representatives of the intellectuals and semi-intellectuals who chanced to be among them and who possessed the least bit of knowledge of political affairs and could make this knowledge articulate. In this way, the petty bourgeois intellectuals were at once and of necessity raised the great prominence in the Awakening Army. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists and volunteers who under pre-bellum conditions led a rather retired life and made no claim of any importance suddenly found themselves representative of whole corps and armies and felt they were leaders of the Revolution. The nebulousness of their political ideology fully corresponded with the formlessness of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. These elements were extremely condescending towards sectarians for we expressed the social demands of the workers and the peasants most pointedly and uncompromisingly. At the same time, the petty bourgeois democracy with the arrogance of revolutionary upstarts harboured the deepest mistrust of itself and of the very masses who had raised it to such unexpected heights. Calling themselves socialists and considering themselves such, the intellectuals were filled with an ill-disguised respect for the political power of the liberal bourgeoisie towards their knowledge and methods. To this was due the efforts of the petty bourgeois leaders to secure at any cost a cooperation, union or coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie. The programme of the social revolutionists created wholly out of nebulous humanitarian formulas substituting sentimental generalisations and moralistic superstructures for the class-conscious attitude proved to be the thing best adapted for a spiritual vestment of this type of leader. Their efforts in one way or another to prop up their spiritual and political helplessness by the science and politics of the bourgeoisie which so overawed them found its theoretical justification in the teachings of Mencher Vicki who explained that the present revolution was a bourgeois revolution and therefore could not succeed without the participation of the bourgeoisie in the government. In this way the natural block of social revolutionists and Mencher Vicki was created which gave simultaneous expression to the political lukewarmness of the middle class intellectuals and its relation of vassal to imperialistic liberalism. It was perfectly clear to us that the logic of the class struggle would, sooner or later, destroy this temporary combination and cast aside the leaders of the transition period. The hegemony of the petty bourgeois intellectuals meant in reality that the peasantry which had suddenly been called through the agency of the military machine to an organised participation in political life had, by mere weight of numbers, overshadowed the working class and temporarily dislodged it. More than this, to the extent that the middle class leaders had suddenly been lifted to terrific heights by the mere bulk of the army, the proletariat itself and its advanced minority had been discounted and could not but acquire a certain political respect for them and a desire to preserve a political bond with them. It might otherwise be in danger of losing contact with the peasantry. In the memories of the older generation of working men, the lesson of 1905 was firmly fixed. Then the proletariat was defeated just because the heavy peasant reserves did not arrive in time for the decisive battle. This is why in this first period of the revolution, even the masses of working men proved so much more receptive to the political ideology of the social revolutionists and the Mencher Vicki. All the more so since the revolution had awakened the hitherto dormant and backward proletariat masses, thus making uniformed intellectual radicalism into a preparatory school for them. The Soviets of working men, soldiers and peasants deputies meant, under these circumstances, the domination of peasant formlessness over proletarian socialism and the domination of intellectual radicalism over peasant formlessness. The Soviet institution rose so rapidly and to such prominence largely because the intellectuals, with their technical knowledge and bourgeois connections, played a leading part in the work of the Soviet. It was clear to us, however, that the whole inspiring structure was based on the deepest inner contradictions and that its downfall during the next phase of the revolution was quite inevitable. The revolution grew directly out of the war and the war became the great test for all parties and revolutionary forces. The intellectual leaders were against the war. Many of them, under the Tsarist regime, had considered themselves partisans of the left wing of the Internationale and subscribed to the Zimmerwald Resolution. But everything changed suddenly when they found themselves in responsible posts to adhere to the policy of revolutionary socialism meant, under those circumstances, to break with the bourgeoisie their own and with that of the Allies. And we have already said that the political helplessness of the intellectual and semi-intellectual middle class sought shelter for itself in a union with bourgeois liberalism. This caused the pitiful and shameful attitude of the middle class leaders towards the war. They confined themselves to sighs, phrases, sweet exhortations or appeals addressed to the Allied governments while they were actually following the same path as the liberal bourgeoisie. The masses of soldiers in the trenches could not, of course, reach the conclusion that the war in which they had participated for nearly three years had changed its character merely because certain new persons who called themselves social revolutionists or Mensheviki were taking part in the Petrograd government. Miljukov displaced the bureaucrat Pokrovsky. Tereshenko displaced Miljukov, which means that bureaucratic treachery had been replaced first by militant cadet imperialism, then by an unprincipled nebulous and political subserviency. But it brought no objective changes and indicated no way out of the terrible war. Just in this lies the primary cause of the subsequent disorganization of the army. The agitators told the soldiers that the Tsarist government had sent them into slaughter without any rhyme or reason, but those who replaced the Tsar could not in the least change the character of the war just as they could not find their way clear for a peace campaign. The first months were spent in merely marking time. This tried the patience of both the army and of the Allied governments and prompted the drive of June 18th, which was demanded by the Allies who insisted upon the fulfilment of the old Tsarist obligations. Scared by their own helplessness and by the growing impatience of the masses, the leaders of the middle class complied with this demand. They actually began to think that in order to obtain peace it was only necessary for the Russian army to make a drive. Such a drive seemed to offer a way out of the difficult situation, a real solution of the problem, salvation. It is hard to imagine a more amazing and more criminal delusion. They spoke of the drive in those days in the same terms that were used by the social patriots of all countries in the first days and weeks of the war when speaking of the necessity of supporting the cause of national defence, of strengthening the holy alliance of nations, et cetera, et cetera. All their Zimmerwald internationalistic infatuations had vanished as if by magic. To us who were in uncompromising opposition, it was clear that the drive was beset with terrible danger, threatening perhaps the ruin of the revolution itself. We sounded the warning that the army, which had been awakened and deeply stirred by the tumultuous events which it was still far from comprehending, could not be sent into battle without giving it new ideas which it could recognise as its own. We warned, accused, threatened, but as for the dominant party, tied up as it was with the Allied bourgeoisie, there was no other course. They were naturally threatened with enmity, with bitter hatred. End of chapter 1 From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 2 The Campaign Against the Bolshevik The future historian will go over the pages of the Russian newspapers for May and June with considerable emotion, for it was then that the agitation for the drive was being carried on. Almost every article, without exception, in all the governmental and official newspapers, was directed against the Bolsheviks. There was not an accusation, not a libel, that was not brought up against us in those days. The leading role in the campaign was played, of course, by the cadet bourgeoisie, who were prompted by their class instincts to the knowledge that it was not only a question of a drive, but also of all the further developments of the revolution, and primarily of the fate of government control. The bourgeoisie's machinery of public opinion revealed itself here in all its power. All the organs, organizations, publications, tribunes and pulpits were pressed into the service of a single common idea to make the Bolsheviks impossible as a political party. The concerted effort and the dramatic newspaper campaign against the Bolsheviks already foreshadowed the civil war which was to develop during the next stage of the revolution. The purpose of the bitterness of this agitation and libel was to create a total estrangement and irrepressible enmity between the laboring masses on the one hand and the educated elements on the other. The liberal bourgeoisie understood that it could not subdue the masses without the aid and intercession of the middle-class democracy, which, as we have already pointed out, proved to be temporarily the leader of the revolutionary organizations. Therefore, the immediate object of the political baiting of the Bolsheviks was to raise irreconcilable enmity between our party and the vast masses of the socialist intellectuals, who, if they were alienated from the proletariat, could not but come under the sway of the liberal bourgeoisie. During the first All-Russian Council of Soviets came the first alarming peel of thunder for telling the terrible events that were coming. The party designated the 10th of June as the day for an armed demonstration at Petrograd. Its immediate purpose was to influence the All-Russian Council of Soviets. Take the power into your own hands, is what the Petrograd working man wanted to say plainly to the social revolutionists and the Mensheviki. Sever relations with the bourgeoisie, give up the idea of coalition and take the power into your own hands. To us, it was clear that the break between the social revolutionists and the Mensheviki on the one hand and the liberal bourgeoisie on the other would compel the former to seek the support of the more determined, advanced organization of the proletariat, which would thus be assured of playing a leading role. And this is exactly what frightened the middle class leaders. Together with the government, in which they had their representatives and hand in hand with the liberal and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, they began a furious and insane campaign against the proposed demonstration as soon as they heard of it. All their forces were marshaled against us. We had an insignificant minority in the council and withdrew. The demonstration did not take place. The frustrated demonstration left the deepest bitterness in the minds of the two opposing forces, widened the breach and intensified their hatred. At a secret conference of the executive committee of the council, in which representatives of the minority participated, Sarah Telly, then minister of the coalition government, with all the arrogance of a narrow-minded middle-class doctrinaire, said that the only danger threatening the revolution was the Bolsheviki and the Petrograd proletariat armed by them. But it was necessary to disarm the people who did not know how to handle firearms. This referred to the working men and to those parts of the Petrograd garrison who were with our party. However, the disarming did not take place. For such a sharp measure, the political and psychological additions were not quite ripe. To afford the masses some compensation for the demonstration they had missed, the council of Soviets called a general unarmed demonstration for the 18th of June. But it was just this very day that marked the political triumph of our party. The masses poured into the streets in mighty columns, and despite the fact that they were called out by the official Soviet organisation to counteract our intended demonstration of the 10th of June, the working men and soldiers had inscribed on their banners and placards the slogans of our party. Down with secret treaties, down with political drives, long live a just peace, down with the ten capitalistic ministers and all power to the Soviets. Of placards expressing confidence in the coalition government, there were but three, one from a Cossack regiment, another from the Plenkonov group and the third from the Petrograd organisation of the Bund, composed mostly of non-proletarian elements. This demonstration showed not only to our enemies, but also to ourselves as well, that we were much stronger in Petrograd than was generally supposed. End of chapter 2 All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom web address mercuriospirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 3 The Drive of June the 18th A governmental crisis as a result of the demonstration by these revolutionary bodies appeared absolutely inevitable. But the impression produced by the demonstration was lost as soon as it was reported from the front that the revolutionary army had advanced to attack the enemy. On the very day that the working men and the Petrograd garrison demanded the publication of the secret treatise and an open offer of peace, Kerensky flung the revolutionary troops into battle. This was no mere coincidence to be sure. The projectors had everything prepared in advance and the time of attack was determined not by military but by political considerations. On the 19th of June there was a so called patriotic demonstration in the streets of Petrograd. The Nevsky prospect, the chief artery of the bourgeoisie was studied with excited groups in which army officers, journalists and well-dressed ladies were carrying on a bitter campaign against the Bolsheviks. The first reports of the military drive were favourable. The leading liberal papers considered that the principal aim had been attained that the drive of June the 18th regardless of its ultimate military results would deal a mortal blow to the revolution, restore the army's former discipline and assure the liberal bourgeoisie of a commanding position in the affairs of the government. We, however, indicated to the bourgeoisie a different line of future events. In a special declaration which was made to the Soviet council a few days before the drive we declared that the military advance would inevitably destroy all the internal ties within the army, set up its various parts one against the other and turn the scales heavily in favour of the counter-revolutionary elements since it would be impossible to maintain discipline in a demoralised army an army devoid of controlling ideas without recourse to severe repressive measures. In other words we foretold in this declaration those results which later came to be known collectively under the name of Cornelavism. We believed that the greatest danger threatened the revolution in either case whether the drive proof successful which we did not expect, or met with failure which seemed to us almost inevitable. A successful military advance would have united the middle class and the bourgeoisie in their common chauvinistic tendencies thus isolating the revolutionary proletariat. An unsuccessful drive was likely to demoralise the army completely to involve a general retreat and the loss of much additional territory and to bring disgust and disappointment to the people. Events took the latter course. The news of victory did not last long. It was soon replaced by gloomy reports of the refusal of many regiments to support the advancing columns of the great losses in commanding officers who sometimes composed the whole of the attacking units etc. In view of its great historical significance we append an extract from the document issued by our party in the All Russian Council of Soviets on the 3rd of June 1917 just two weeks before the drive. Quote We deem it necessary to present as the first order of the day a question on whose solution depend not only all the other measures to be adopted by the council but actually and literally the fate of the whole Russian Revolution the question of the military drive which is being planned for the immediate future. Having put the people and the army which does not know in the name of what international ends it is called upon to shed its blood face to face with the impending attack with all its consequences the counter-revolutionary circles of Russia are counting on the fact that this drive will necessitate a concentration of power in the hands of the military, diplomatic and capitalistic groups affiliated with English, French and American imperialism and thus free them from the necessity of reckoning later with the organised will of Russian democracy. The secret counter-revolutionary instigators of the drive who do not stop short of even military adventurism are consciously trying to play on the demoralisation in the army brought about by the internal and international situation of the country are inspiring the discouraged elements with a fallacious idea that the very fact of a drive can rehabilitate the army and by this mechanical means hide the lack of a definite program for liquidating the war. At the same time it is clear that such an advance cannot but completely disorganise the army by setting up its various units one against the other. End quote. The military events were developing amid ever increasing difficulties in the internal life of the nation with regard to the land question industrial life and national relations the coalition government did not take a single resolute step forward the food and transportation situation were becoming more and more disorganised local clashes were growing more frequent as socialistic ministers were exhorting the masses to be patient all decisions and measures including the calling of the constituent assembly were being postponed the insolvency and the instability of the coalition regime were obvious there were two possible ways out to drive the bourgeoisie out of power and promote the aims of the revolution or to adopt the policy of bridling the people by resorting to repressive measures Kerensky and Seratelli clung to a middle course and only muddled matters them all when the cadets the wiser and more farsighted leaders of the coalition government understood that the unsuccessful military advance of June 18th might deal a blow not only to the revolution but also to the government temporarily they threw the whole weight of responsibility upon their allies to the left on the 2nd of July came a crisis in the ministry the immediate cause of which was the Ukrainian question this was in respect a period of most intense political suspense from various points at the front came delegates and private individuals telling of the chaos which reigned in the army as a result of the advance the so-called government press demanded severe repressions such demands frequently came from the so-called socialistic papers Kerensky more and more openly went over to the side of the cadets and the cadet generals who had manifested not only their hatred of revolution but also their bitter enmity towards revolutionary parties in general the allied ambassadors were pressing the government with the demand that army discipline be restored and the advance continued the greatest panic prevailed in government circles while among the working men much discontent had accumulated which craved for outward expression avail yourself of the resignations step ministers and take all the power into your own hands was the call addressed to the working men of Petrograd to the socialist revolutionists and Mensheviki in control of the Soviet parties I recall the session of the executive committee that was held on the 2nd of July the Soviet ministers came to report a new crisis in the government we were intensely interested to learn what position they would take now that they had actually gone to pieces under the great ordeal arising from coalition policies was Zerotely he nonchalantly explained to the executive committee that those concessions which he and Terashenko had made to the Kiev Rada did not by any means signify a dismemberment of the country and that this, therefore, did not give the cadets any good reason for leaving the ministry Zerotely accused the cadet leaders of practicing a centralistic doctrinaerism of failing to understand the necessity for compromising with the Ukrainians etc etc the total impression was pitiful in the extreme the hopeless doctrinaire of the coalition government was hurling the charge of doctrinairism against the crafty capitalist politicians who seized upon the first suitable excuse for compelling their political clerks to repent of the decisive turn they had given to the course of events by the military advance of June the 18th after all the preceding experience of the coalition there would seem to be but one way out of the difficulty to break with the cadets and set up the Soviet government the relative forces within the Soviets were such at the time that the Soviets' power as a political party would fall naturally into the hands of the social revolutionists and the Mensheviki we deliberately faced the situation thanks to the possibility of re-elections at any time the mechanism of the Soviets assured a sufficiently exact reflection of the progressive shift towards the left in the masses of workers and soldiers after the break of the coalition with the bourgeoisie we expected, received a greater following in the Soviet organizations under such circumstances the proletariat struggle for power would naturally move in the channel of Soviet organizations and could take a more normal course having broken with the bourgeoisie the middle class democracy would itself fall under their ban and would be compelled to seek a closer union with the socialistic proletariat in this way the indecisiveness and political indefiniteness of the middle class democratic elements would be overcome sooner or later by the working masses with the help of our criticism this is the reason why we demanded that the leading Soviet parties in which we had no real confidence and we frankly said so should take the governing power into their own hands but even after the ministerial crisis of the 2nd of July Seratelli and his adherents did not abandon the coalition idea they explained in the executive committee that the leading cadets were indeed demoralized by doctrinearism by counter-revolutionism but that in the provinces there were still many bourgeois elements which could still go hand in hand with the revolutionary democrats and that in order to make sure of their cooperation it was necessary to attract representatives of the bourgeoisie into the membership of the new ministry Dan already entertained hopes of a radical democratic party to be hastily built up, at the time by a few pro-democratic politicians the report that the coalition government had been broken up by a new coalition spread rapidly through Petrograd and provoked a storm of indignation among the working men and soldiers everywhere thus the events of July the 3rd to the 5th were produced End of Chapter 3 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address mercuriospirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 4 The July Days Already during the session of the Executive Committee we were informed by telephone that a regiment of machine gunners was making ready for attack By telephone too we adopted measures to check these preparations but the ferment was working among the people Representatives of military units that had been disciplined for insubordination brought alarming news from the front of repressions which aroused the garrison Among the Petrograd working men the displeasure of the official leaders was intensified by the fact that Dzereteli, Dan and Sheditz misrepresented the general views of the proletariat in their endeavour to prevent the Petrograd Soviet from becoming the mouthpiece of the new tendencies of the toilers The all Russian Executive Committee formed in the July Council and depending upon the more backward provinces put the Petrograd Soviet more and more into the background and took all matters into its own hands including even local Petrograd affairs A clash was inevitable The workers and soldiers pressed from below vehemently voiced their discontent with the official Soviet policies and demanded greater resolution from our party We considered that in the view of backwardness of the provinces the time for such a course had not yet arrived At the same time a moving place at the front might bring extreme chaos into the revolutionary ranks and desperation to the hearts of the people The attitude of our party toward the movement of July 3rd to the 5th was quite well defined On the one hand there was the danger that Petrograd might break away from the more backward parts of the country while on the other there was the feeling that only the active and energetic intervention of Petrograd could save the day The party agitators who worked among the people were working in harmony with the masses conducting an uncompromising campaign There was still some hope that the demonstration of the revolutionary masses in the streets might destroy the blind doctorinarism of the coalitionists and make them understand that they could retain their power only by breaking openly with the bourgeoisie Despite all that had recently been said and written in the bourgeoisie press our party had no intention whatsoever of seizing power by means of an armed revolt In point of fact the revolutionary demonstration started spontaneously as guided by us only in a political way The Central Executive Committee was holding its session in the Tarida Palace when turbulent crowds of armed soldiers and workmen surrounded it from all sides Among them was of course an insignificant number of anarchistic elements which were ready to use their arms against the Soviet centre There were also some pogrom elements black hundred elements and obviously mercenary elements seeking to utilise the occasion for instigating pogroms and chaos From among the sundry elements came the demands for the arrest of Chernoff and Serateli for the dispersal of the Executive Committee etc. An attempt was even made to arrest Chernoff Subsequently at Kresti I identified one of the sailors who had participated in this attempt He was a criminal imprisoned at Kresti for robbery And the bourgeoisie and the coalitionist press represented this movement as a pogromist counter-revolutionary affair at the same time as a Bolshevist crusade The intermediate objects of which was to seize the reins of government by the use of armed force against the Central Executive Committee The movement of July 3rd to the 5th had already disclosed with perfect clearness that a complete impotence reigned within the ruling Soviet parties at Petrograd The garrison was far from being all on our side There were still some wavering undecided passive elements but if we should ignore the junkers there were no regiments at all which were ready to fight us in the defence of the government or the leading Soviet parties It was necessary to summon troops from the front The entire strategy of Dzerotely and Chernoff and others of the 3rd of July resolved itself into this to gain time in order to give Karensky an opportunity to bring up his loyal regiments One deputation after another entered the hall of the Tarida Palace which was surrounded by armed crowds and demanded a complete separation from the bourgeoisie positive social reforms and the opening of peace negotiations We, the Bolsheviki met every new company of disgruntled troops gathered in the yards and streets with speeches in which we called upon them to be calm and assured them that in the view of the present temper of the people the coalitionists could not succeed in forming a new coalition Especially pronounced was the temper of the Kronstadt sailors whom we had to restrain from transcending the limits of peaceful demonstration The 4th demonstration which was already controlled by our party assumed a still more serious character The Soviet leaders were quiet at sea Their speeches assumed an evasive character The answers given by Shedid to the deputies were without any political content It was clear that the official leaders were marking time On the night of the 4th the loyal regiments began to arrive During the session of the Executive Committee the Tarida Palace resounded to the strains of the Marseillers The expressions on the faces of the leaders suddenly changed They displayed a look of confidence which had been entirely wanting of late It was produced by the entry into the Tarida Palace of the Velinsk Regiment The same one which a few months later was to lead the vanguard of the October Revolution under our banners From this moment everything changed There was no longer any need to handle the delegates of the Petrograd workmen and soldiers with kid gloves on the floor of the Executive Committee which referred to an armed insurrection that had been suppressed on that very day by loyal revolutionary forces The Bolsheviki were declared to be a counter-revolutionary party The fear experienced by the liberal bourgeoisie during the two days of armed demonstration betrayed itself in a hatred that was crystallized not only in the columns of the newspapers but also in the streets of Petrograd and more especially on the Nevsky Prospect where individual workmen and soldiers in the act of criminal agitation were mercilessly beaten up The Junkers, Army Officers, Policemen and the St. Georgian Cavaliers were now the masters of the situation and all these were headed by the savage counter-revolutionists The workers' organisations and establishments of our party were being ruthlessly crushed and demolished arrests, searches, assaults and even murders came to be common occurrences On the night of the 4th the then Attorney General sent over to the press documents which were intended to prove that the Bolsheviks party was headed by bribed agents of Germany The leaders of the social revolutionists and Menshevik parties have known us too long and too well to believe these accusations At the same time they were too deeply interested in their success to repudiate them publicly and even now one cannot recall without discuss that Saturnalia of lies which was broadcast in all the bourgeoisie and coalition newspapers was suppressed. Revolutionary Petrograd felt that the provinces and the army were still far from being with it In working men's sections of the city a short period of tyrannical infringement set in, while in the garrison repressive measures were introduced against the disorganised regiments and certainly of its units were disarmed At the same time the political leaders manufactured a new ministry with the inclusion of representatives of 3rd rate bourgeois groups which although adding nothing to the government robbed it of its last message of revolutionary initiative Meanwhile, events at the front ran their own course The organic unity of the army was shaken to its very depths. The soldiers were becoming convinced that the great majority of the officers who at the beginning of the revolution bedorbed themselves with red revolutionary paint were still very inimical in the new regime An open selection of counter-revolutionary elements was being made in the lines Bolshevik publications were ruthlessly persecuted. The military advance had long ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libeled the army Whereas on the eve of the advance the ruling parties told us that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of us and would not have anything to do with us, now when the gamble of the drive had ended so disastrously these same persons and parties laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders The prisons were crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers All the old legal bloodhounds of Tsarism were employed in investigating the July 3rd to the 5th Affair Under these circumstances the social revolutionists and the Alan Chevicki went so far as to demand that Lenin, Zinovyev and others of their group should surrender themselves to the courts of justice End of chapter 4 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 5 The Events Following the July Days The infringements of liberty in the working men's quarters lasted but a little while and were followed by accessions to it, not only among the proletariat but also in the Petrograd garrison. The coalitionists were losing all influence. The wave of Bolshevism began to spread from the urban centres to every part of the country and, despite all obstacles, penetrated into the army ranks. The new coalition government, with Kerensky at its head, had already openly embarked upon a policy of repression. The ministry had restored the death penalty in the army. Our papers were suppressed and our agitators were arrested, but finally increased our influence. In spite of all the obstacles involved in the new elections for the Petrograd Soviet, the distribution of power in it had become so changed that on certain important questions we already commanded a majority vote, the same with the case in the Moscow Soviet. At that time, I, together with many others, was imprisoned at Kresti, having been arrested for instigating and organising the armed revolt of July the 3rd to the 5th in collusion with the German authorities and with supporting the military ends of the Hohenzollens. The famous prosecutor of the Tsarist regime, Alexandrov, who had prosecuted numerous revolutionists was now entrusted with the task of protecting the public from the counter-revolutionary Bolsheviki. Under the old regime, the inmates of prisons used to be divided into political prisoners and criminals. Now a new terminology was established, criminals and Bolsheviks. Great perplexity reigned among the imprisoned soldiers. The boys came to the country and had previously taken no part in political life. They thought that the revolution had set them free once and for all. Hence they viewed with amazement their door locks and grated windows. While taking their exercise in the prison yard, they would always ask me what all this meant and how it would end. I comforted them with the hope of our ultimate victory. Towards the end of August occurred the revolt of Kornilov. This was the immediate result of the mobilisation of the counter-revolutionary forces to which a forceful impulse had been imparted by the attack of July the 18th. At the celebrated Moscow Congress, which took place in the middle of August, Kerensky attempted to take a middle ground between the property elements and the democracy of the small bourgeoisie. The maximalists were on the whole considered a standing beyond the bounds of the legal. Kerensky threatened them with blood and iron, which met with vehement applause from the property half of the gathering and treacherous silence on Kornilov, but the hysterical outcries and threats of Kerensky did not satisfy the chiefs of the counter-revolutionary interests. They had only to clearly observed the revolutionary tide flooding every position of the country among the working class in the villages in the army, and they considered it imperative to adopt without delay the most extreme measures to curb the masses. After reaching an understanding with the property owning bourgeoisie, who saw in him their hero, Kornilov took it upon himself to accomplish this hazardous task. Kerensky, Savinkov, Filonenko and other socialist revolutionists of the government or semi-government class participated in this conspiracy, but each and every one of them at a certain stage of the altering circumstances betrayed Kornilov, for they knew that in the case of his defeat they would turn out to have been on the wrong side of the fence. We lived through the events connected with Kornilov while we were in jail and followed them in the newspapers. The unhindered delivery of newspapers was the only important respect in which the jails of Kerensky differed from those of the old regime. The Cossack general's adventure miscarried. Six months of revolution had created in the consciousness of the masses and in their organization a sufficient resistance against an open counter-revolutionary attack. The consilable Soviet parties were terribly frightened at the prospect of the possible results of the Kornilov conspiracy which threatened to sweep away not only the maximalists, but also the whole revolution, together with its governing parties. The social revolutionists and the minimalists proceeded to legalize the maximalists. This, to be sure, only retrospectively and only halfway in as much as they sent in possible dangers in the future. The very same Kronstadt sailors whom they had dubbed burglars and counter-revolutionists in the days following the July uprising were summoned during the Kornilov danger to Petrograd for the defense of the revolution. They came without a murmur, without a word of reproach, without recalling the past and occupied the most responsible posts. I had the fullest right to recall to Serateli these words which I had addressed to him in May when he was occupied in persecuting the Kronstadt sailors. When a counter-revolutionary general attempts to throw the noose around the neck of the revolution, the cadets will grease the rope with soap while the Kronstadt sailors will come to fight and die together with us. The Soviet organizations had revealed everywhere in the rear and at the front their vitality and their power in the struggle with the Kornilov uprising. In almost no instance did things ever come to a military conflict. The revolutionary masses ground into nothing the general's conspiracy. Just as the moderates in July found no soldiers among the Petrograd garrison to fight against us, so now Kornilov found no soldiers on the whole front to fight against the revolution. He had acted by virtue of a delusion and the words of our propaganda easily destroyed his designs. According to information in the newspapers I had expected a more rapid unfolding of subsequent events in the direction of the passing of the power into the hands of the Soviets. The growth of the influence and power of the maximalists became indubitable and had gained an irresistible momentum. The maximalists had warned against the coalition, against the attack of the 18th of July, they predicted the Kornilov affair. The masses of the people became convinced by experience that we were right. During the most terrifying moments of the Kornilov conspiracy when the Caucasian division was approaching Petrograd, the Petrograd Soviet was arming the working men with the extorted consent of the authorities. Army divisions which had been brought up against us had long since achieved their successful rebirth in the stimulating atmosphere and were now all together on our side. The Kornilov uprising was destined to open definitely the eyes of the army to the inadmissibility of any continued policy of conciliation with the bourgeois counter-revolution. Hence it was possible to expect that the crushing of the Kornilov uprising would prove to be only an introduction to an immediate, aggressive action on the part of the revolutionary forces under the leadership of our party for the purpose of seizing sole power. But events unfolded more slowly. In the expansion of their revolutionary feeling, the masses had become more cautious after the bitter lesson of the July days and renounced all isolated demonstrations awaiting a direct instruction and direction from above. And also among the leadership of our party they developed a watchful waiting policy. Under these circumstances the liquidation of the Kornilov adventure irrespective of the profound regrouping of forces to our advantage did not bring about any immediate political changes. Chapter 5 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 6 The Conflict with the Soviets In the Petrograd Soviet the domination of our party was definitely strengthened from that time on. This was evidenced in dramatic fashion when the question of the personnel of its presiding body came up. At that epoch when the social revolutionists and the minimalists were holding sway in the Soviets they isolated the maximalists by every means in their power. They did not admit even one maximalist into the membership of the Executive Committee at Petrograd even when our party represented at least one third of all the Soviet members. Afterwards when the Petrograd Soviet, by a dwindling majority passed the resolution for the transferring of all power into the hands of the Soviet our party put forth the demand to establish a coalition executive committee formed on a proportional basis. The old presiding body the members of which were Sheridz, Serotely, Karensky, Skobalov, Chernoff flatly refused this demand. It may not be out of place to mention this here in as much as representatives of the parties broken up by the revolution speak of the necessity of presenting one front for the sake of democracy and accuses us of separatism. There was called at that time a special meeting of the Petrograd Soviet which was to decide the question of the presiding body's fate. All forces all reserves have been mobilised on both sides. Serotely came out with a speech embodying a program and pointed out that the question of the presiding body was a question of orientation. We reckoned that we would sway somewhat less than half of the votes and were ready to consider that a sign of our progress. Actually however the vote showed that we had a majority of nearly 100. For six months said Serotely at the time we have stood at the head of the Petrograd Soviet and led it from victory to victory. We wish that you may hold for at least half of that time the positions which you are now preparing to occupy. In the Moscow Soviet a similar change of leadership among the parties took place. One after the other the provincial Soviets joined the Bolshevik position. The date of convoking the second all Russian Congress of Soviets was approaching but the leading group of the Central Executive Committee was striving with all its might to put off the Congress to an indefinite future time in order thus to destroy it in advance. It was evident that the new Congress of Soviets would give our party a majority would correspondingly alter the makeup of the Central Executive Committee and deprive the fusionists of their most important position. The struggle for the convocation of the all Russian Congress of Soviets assumed the greatest importance for us. To counterbalance this the Mensheviks, minimalists and the social revolutionists put forth the Democratic conference idea. They needed this move against both us and Kurensky. By this time the head of the ministry assumed an absolutely independent and irresponsible position. He had been raised to power by the Petrograd Soviet during the first epoch of the revolution. Kurensky had entered the ministry without a preliminary decision of the Soviets but his admission was subsequently approved. After the first Congress of Soviets the socialist ministers were held accountable to the Central Executive Committee. Their allies, the Gdets constitutional Democrats were responsible only to their party. To meet the bourgeoisie's wishes the General Executive Committee after the July days released the socialist ministers from all responsibility to the Soviets in order, as it were, to create a revolutionary dictatorship. It is rather well to mention this too now that the same persons who built up the dictatorship of a coterie come forth with accusations and implications against the dictatorship of a class. The Moscow conference at which the skillfully manipulated professional and democratic elements balanced each other strengthened Kurensky's power over classes and parties. This aim was attained only in appearance. In reality the Moscow conference revealed Kurensky's utter impotence, for he was equally remote from both the professional elements and the bourgeoisie democracy. But since the liberals and conservatives applauded his onslaughts against democracy the fusionists gave him ovations when he cautiously upbraided the counter-revolutionaries. The impression was growing upon him that he was supported, as it were by both the former and the latter and accordingly commanded unlimited power. Over working men and revolutionary soldiers he held the threat of blood and iron. His policy continued the bargaining of Kornilov behind the scenes, a bargaining which compromised him even in the fusionist size. In evasively diplomatic terms so characteristically of him Serateli spoke of personal movements in politics and of the necessity of curbing these personal movements. This task was to be accomplished by the Democratic conference which was called, according to arbitrary forms from among representatives of Soviets, Dumas, Zemtos, professional trade unions and co-operative societies. Still the main task was to secure a sufficiently conservative composition of the conference to dissolve the Soviets once and for all in the fullness mass of democracy and on the new organizational basis to gain a firm footing against the Bolshevik tide. Here it will not be out of place to note in a few words the difference between the political role of the Soviets and that of the Democratic organs of self-government. More than once the Philistines call our attention to the fact that the new Dumas and Zemtos elected on the basis of universal suffrage were incomparably more Democratic than the Soviets and were more suited to represent the population. However this formal Democratic criterion is devoid of serious content in a revolutionary epoch. The significance of the revolution lies in the rapid changing of the judgment of the masses. In the fact that new and ever new strata of population acquire experience verify their views of the day before, sweep them aside, work out new ones, desert old leaders and follow new ones in the forward march. During revolutionary times, formally Democratic organizations based upon the ponderous apparatus of universal suffrage inevitably fall behind the development of the political consciousness of the masses. Quite different are the Soviets. They rely immediately upon organic groupings such as shop, mill, factory, vaults, regiment etc. To be sure there are guarantees just as legal of the strictness of elections as are used in created Democratic Dumas and Zemtos but there are in the Soviet incomparably more serious, more profound guarantees of the direct and immediate relation between the deputy and the electors. A town duma or Zemtos member is supported by the amorphous mass of electors which entrusts its full powers to him for a year and then breaks up. The Soviet electors remain always in united by the conditions of their work and their existence. The deputy is ever before their eyes. At any moment they can prepare a mandate to him, censure him, recall or replace him with another person. If during the revolutionary month preceding the general political evolution expressed in the fact that the influence of the fusionist parties was being replaced by the decisive influence of the Bolshevik, it is quite plain that this process found its most striking and fullest expression in the Soviets while the Dumas and Zemtos not withstanding all their formal democratism express yesterday's status of the popular masses and not today's. It is exactly what explains the gravitation towards the Dumas and Zemtos on the part of those parties which were losing more and more of their esteem of the revolutionary class. We shall meet with the same question only on a larger scale later when we come to the constituent assembly. End of Chapter 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom Web address www.spirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 7 The Democratic Conference The Democratic Conference called by Seratelli and his fellow combatants in mid-September was totally artificial in character, representing as it did a combination of Soviets and organs of self-government in a ratio calculated to secure a preponderance of the fusionist helplessness and confusion the conference ended in a pitiful fiasco. The professional bourgeoisie treated the conference with the greatest hostility, beholding in it an endeavour to push the bourgeoisie away from the positions it had approached at the Moscow Conference. The revolutionary proletariat and the masses of soldiers and peasants connected with it condemned in advance the fraudulent method of calling together the Democratic Conference. The immediate task of the conference was achieved. Kerensky neither wanted nor permitted responsibility because this was not permitted by the bourgeoisie, which was backing him. Irresponsibility towards the organs of the so-called democracy meant, in fact, responsibility to the cadets and the allied embassies. For the time being, this was sufficient for the bourgeoisie. On the question of coalition, the Democratic Conference revealed its utter insolvency. The votes in favour of a coalition against the coalition. The majority voted against a coalition with the cadets. But with the cadets left out, there proved to be, among the bourgeoisie, no serious counter agencies for the coalition. Sarah Telly explained this in detail to the conference. If the conference did not grasp it, so much the worse for the conference. Behind the backs of the conference, negotiations were carried on without concealment with the cadets whom they had repudiated and it was decided that the cadets would be elected as social workers, but as social workers. Press hard on both right and left, the bourgeois democracy tolerated all this dickering and thereby demonstrated its utter political prostration. From the Democratic Conference, a Soviet was picked and it was decided to complete it by adding representatives of the professional elements. This pre-parliament was to fill the vacant period before the convocation of the constituent assembly, contrary to democracy, the new coalition ministry retained its formal independence with regard to the pre-parliament. Everything together produced the impression of a pitiful and impotent creation of an office clerk behind which was concealed the complete capitulation of the petty bourgeois democracy before the professional liberalism, which a month previously had openly supported Kornilov's attack on the revolution. The sum total of the whole affair was therefore the restoration and restoration of Kornilov. No longer could there be any doubt that quite independently of the make-up of the future constituent assembly, the governmental power would in fact be held by the bourgeoisie, as despite all the preponderance given them by the masses of the people, the fusionist parties invariably arrived at a coalition with the cadets, deeming it impossible, as they did, to create a state power without the bourgeoisie. The attitude of the masses towards Milukov's party was one of the deepest hostilities. During this period, the cadets suffered merciless defeat, and yet the very parties, i.e. the social revolutionists and Mensheviks, which victoriously defeated the cadet party at the elections, after the election gave it the place of honour in the coalition government. It is natural that the masses realised more and more that in reality the fusionist parties were playing the role of stewards to the liberal bourgeoisie. Meantime, the internal situation was becoming more and more complicated on aimlessly, senselessly, and interminably. The government took no steps whatever to extricate itself from the vicious circle. The laughable scheme was proposed of sending the Menshevik Skobalov to Paris to influence the Allied imperialists, but no sane man attached any importance to this scheme. Kornilov gave up Riga to the Germans in order to terrorise public opinion and having brought about this condition to establish the discipline of the Naut in the army. Danger threatened Petrograd and the bourgeois elements greeted this peril with unconcealed malicious joy. The former president of the Duma, Rodzayenko, openly said again and again that the surrender of debauched Petrograd to the Germans would not be a great misfortune. For illustration he cited Riga where the deputy Soviets had been done away with after the coming of the Germans, and firm order together with the old police system had been established. Would the Baltic fleet be lost, but the fleet had been debauched by the revolutionary propaganda? Ergo, the loss was not so great. The cynicism of a garrulous nobleman expressed the hidden thoughts of the greater part of the bourgeoisie that to surrender Petrograd to the Germans did not meant to lose it. Under the peace treaty it would be restored but restored ravaged by German militarism. By that time the revolution would be decapitated and it would be easier to manage. Kerenski's government did not think of seriously defeating the capital. On the contrary, public opinion was being prepared for its possible surrender. Public institutions were being removed from Petrograd to Moscow and other cities. In this setting the soldiers section of the Petrograd Soviet had its meeting. Feeling was tense and turbulent. Was the government incapable of defending Petrograd? If so, let it make peace. And if incapable of making peace let it clear out. The frame of mind of the soldiers section found expression in this resolution. Petrograd was already the heat lightning of the October revolution. At the front the situation grew worse day by day. Chili autumn with its rains and winds was drawing nigh and there was looming up a fourth winter campaign. Supplies deteriorated every day. In the rear the front had been forgotten. No reliefs. No new contingents. No warm winter clothing which was indispensable. Dissertions grew in number. The old army committees of the Petrograd revolution remained their places and supported Korencki's policy. Re-elections were forbidden and abyss sprang up between the committees and the soldier masses. Finally the soldiers began to regard the committees with hatred. With increasing frequency delegates from the trenches were arriving in Petrograd and at the sessions of the Petrograd Soviet put the question point blank. What is to be done further? By whom and how will the war be ended? Why is the Petrograd silent? End of chapter 7 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Ditman Liverpool United Kingdom web address mercuriospirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 8 The Inevitability of the Struggle for Power The Petrograd Soviet was not silent. It demanded the immediate transfer of all power into the hands of the Soviets in the capitals and in the provinces, the immediate transfer of the land to the peasants, the working men's control of production and immediate opening of peace negotiations. So long as we remained an opposition party, the motto All Power to the Soviets was a propaganda motto. But as soon as we found ourselves in the majority of all the principle Soviets, this motto imposed upon us the duty of a direct and immediate fight for power. In the country villages the situation had grown entangled and complicated in the extreme. The revolution had promised land to the peasants but at the same time the leading parties demanded that the peasants should not touch this land until the constituent assembly should meet. At first the peasants waited patiently, but when they began to lose patience the coalition ministry showered repressive measures upon them. Meanwhile the constituent assembly was receding to ever-remoted distances. The bourgeoisie insisted upon calling the constituent assembly after the conclusion of peace. The peasant masses were growing more and more impatient. What we had foretold at the very beginning of the revolution was being realised. The peasants were seizing the land of their own accord. Repressive measures grew. Arrests of revolutionary land committees began. In certain U.S. districts, Kerensky introduced a line of law. A line of delegates who came on foot flowed from the villages to the Petrograd Soviet. They complained that they had been arrested when they attempted to carry out the Petrograd Soviets program and to transfer the estate holders land into the hands of the peasant committees. The peasants demanded protection of us. We replied that we should be in a position to protect them only if the power were in our hands. From this however it followed that the Soviets must seize the power if they did not wish to become mere debating societies. It is senseless to fight for the power of the Soviets six or eight weeks before the constituent assembly. Our neighbours on the right told us. We however were in no degree infected with this fetish worship of the constituent assembly. In the first place there were no guarantees that it really would be called the breaking up of the army, mass desertions, disorganisation of the supplies department, agrarian revolution all this created an environment which was unfavourable because of the elections of the constituent assembly. The surrender of Petrograd to the Germans furthermore threatened to remove altogether the question of elections from the order of the day and besides, even if it were called according to the old registration lists under the leadership of the old parties the constituent assembly would be but a cover and a sanction for the coalition power. Without the bourgeoisie neither the SRs or the Mensheviks were in a position to assume power. Only the revolutionary class was destined to break the vicious circle wherein the revolution was revolving simply snatched from the hands of the elements which were directly or indirectly serving the bourgeoisie and making use of the state apparatus as a tool of obstruction against the revolutionary demands of the people. All power to the Soviets demanded our party. Translated into party language this had meant in the preceding period the power of the SRs and Mensheviks as opposed to a coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie. Now in October 1917 the same motto made handing over all power to the revolutionary proletariat at the head of which at this period stood the Bolshevik party. It was a question of the dictatorship of the working class which was leading or more correctly was capable of leading the many millions of the poorest peasantry. This was the historical significance of the October uprising. Everything led the party to this path. Since the first days of the revolution we had been preaching the necessity and inevitability of the power passing to the Soviets. After a great internal struggle the majority of the Soviets made this demand their own having accepted our point of view. We were preparing the second all Russian congress of Soviets at which we expected our party's complete victory. Under Dan's leadership the cautious Shedits had departed for the Caucasus. The Central Executive Committee attempted to block in every way the calling of the congress of the Soviets. After great exertions supported by the Soviet fraction of the Democratic Assembly the setting of the date of the congress for October the 25th. This date was destined to become the greatest day in the history of Russia. As a preliminary we called in Petrograd a congress of Soviets of the northern regions including the Baltic Fleet and Moscow. At this congress we had a solid majority and obtained a certain support on the right in the persons of the left SR faction besides laying important organisational premises for the October Uprising. Chapter 8 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 9 Petrograd Garrison But even earlier, previous to the congress of northern Soviets, there occurred an event which was destined to play a most important role in the subsequent political struggle. Early in October there came to a meeting of the Petrograd Executive Committee the Soviets representative in the staff of the Petrograd Military District and announced that headquarters demanded that two thirds of the Petrograd Garrison should be sent to the front. For what purpose? To defend Petrograd? They were not to be sent to the front at once, but it still was necessary to make ready immediately. The staff recommended that the Petrograd Soviet approve this plan. We were on our guard. At the end of August also, five revolutionary regiments complete or in parts have been taken out of Petrograd. This had been done at the request of the then Supreme Commander Kornilov, who at that very time was preparing to hurl a Caucasian division against Petrograd with the intention of once for all settling with the revolutionary capital. Thus we had already the experience of purely political transfer of regiments under the pretext of military operations. Anticipating events I shall say that from documents brought to light after the October Revolution it became clear beyond any doubt that the proposed removal of the Petrograd Garrison actually had nothing to do with military purposes but was forced upon Commander-in-Chief Duk Hohin against his will by none else but Karensky who was striving to clear the capital of the most revolutionary soldiers i.e. those most hostile to him but at that time early in October our suspicions evoked at first a storm of patriotic indignation the staff people were pressing us Karensky was impatient for the ground under his feet had grown too hot we on the other hand delayed answering danger undoubtedly threatened Petrograd and the question of defending the capital loomed before in all its terrible significance but after the Kornilov experience after Rodzyanko's words concerning the desirability of the German occupation when should we take the assurance that Petrograd would not be maliciously given up to the Germans in punishment for its seditious spirit the executive committee refused to affix its seal blindly to the order to transfer two-thirds of the Garrison it was necessary to verify whether there really were military considerations back of this order and therefore it was necessary to create an organisation for this verification thus was born the idea of creating by the side of the soldiers section of the Soviets i.e. the Garrisons political representation a purely military organisation in the form of a military revolutionary committee which subsequently acquired enormous power and became the real tool of the October revolution. Undoubtedly even in those hours when putting forth the idea of creating an organisation in whose hands would be concentrated the threats for guiding the Petrograd Garrison on the purely military side we clearly realised that this very organisation might become an irreplaceable revolutionary tool at that time we were already openly heading for the uprising and were preparing for it in an organised way as indicated above the all Russian congress of Soviets was ret for October the 25th there could be no longer any doubt that the congress would declare itself in favour of power being handed over to the Soviets but such a resolution must forthwith be put into actuality else it would turn into a worthless platonic demonstration the logic of events therefore required us to set the uprising for October the 25th exactly so the entire bourgeois press interpreted it but in the first place the fate of the congress depended upon the Petrograd Garrison would it allow Kurensky to surround the congress of Soviets and disperse it with the assistance of several hundred or thousand military cadets ensigns and thugs did not the very attempt to remove the Garrison mean that the government was preparing to disperse the congress of Soviets and strange it would be if it were not preparing since we were before the entire land openly mobilising the Soviet forces in order to deal the coalition forces a death blow thus the conflict of Petrograd was developing on the basis of the question of the Garrison's fate first and foremost this question touched all the soldiers to the quick but the working men too felt the liveliest interest in the conflict fearing as they did that upon the Garrisons removal they will be smothered by the cadets and Cossacks thus the conflict was assuming a character of the very keenest nature and developing on a soil extremely unfavourable Kerensky's government parallel with this was going on the above described struggle for convoking the all Russian congress of the Soviets we openly declaring in the name of the Petrograd Soviet and the northern region congress that the second congress of Soviets must set Kerensky's government aside and become the true master of the Russian land as a matter of fact the uprising was already on it was developing quite openly before the eyes of the whole country during October the question of the uprising played an important role in a life Lenin who was hiding in Finland insisted in numerous letters upon more resolute tactics the lowest strata were infirm and dissatisfaction was accumulating because the Bolshevik party which have proved to be in the majority in the Petrograd Soviet was drawing no practical conclusions from its own mottos on October the 10th a conspiratory meeting of the Central Committee of our party took place with Lenin present the question of the uprising was on the order of the day by a majority of all against two votes it was decided that the only means of saving the revolution and the country from final dissolution lay an armed insurrection which must transfer power into the hands of the Soviets this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom web address mercuriospirit.co.uk from October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 10 the Democratic Soviet and Pre-Parliament the Democratic Soviet which had detached itself from the Democratic conference had absorbed all the helplessness of the latter the old Soviet parties the social revolutionists and Mensheviks had created an artificial majority in it for themselves only the more strikingly to reveal their political prostration behind the Soviet curtains Serotelli was carrying on involved parlies with Kurensky and the representatives of the professional elements as they began to say in the Soviet in order to avoid the insulting term bourgeoisie Serotelli's report on the course and issue of the negotiations was a sort of funeral oration over a whole period of the revolution it turned out that neither Kurensky nor the professional elements had consented to responsibility towards the new semi-representative institution on the other hand outside the limits of the cadet party they had not succeeded in finding so called efficient social leaders the organisers of the venture had to capitulate on both points the capitulation was all the more eloquent because the Democratic conference had been called exactly for the purpose of doing away with the irresponsible regime while the conference by a formal vote rejected a coalition with the cadets at several meetings of the Democratic Soviet which took place prior to the revolution they prevailed an atmosphere of tenseness and utter incapacity for action the Soviet did not reflect the revolution's march forward but the dissolution of the parties that had lagged behind the revolution even previous to the Democratic conference in our party faction I had raised the question of demonstratively withdrawing from the conference and boycotting the Democratic Soviet it was necessary to show the masses by action that the fusionists had led the revolution into a blind alley the fight for building up the Soviet power could be carried on only in a revolutionary way the power must be snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil their method of working through an artificially picked pre-parliament and a conjectural constituent assembly had to be opposed by our political method of mobilising the forces around the Soviets through the all Russian congress of Soviets and through insurrection this could be done only by means of an open break before the eyes of the entire people with the body created by Serateli and his adherents and by focusing on the Soviet institutions the entire attention on all the forces of the working class this is why I propose the demonstrative withdrawal from the conference and a revolutionary agitation in shops and regiments against the attempt to play false with the will of the revolution and once again turn its progress into the channel of cooperation with the bourgeoisie Lenin whose letter we received a few days later expressed himself to the same effect but in the party's upper circles hesitation was still apparent on this question the July days had left a deep impression in the party's consciousness the mass of working men and soldiers had recovered from the July debacle much more rapidly than had many of the leading comrades who feared the nipping of the revolution in the bud by a new premature onslaught of the masses in our group of the democratic conference I mustered 50 votes in favour of my proposal against 70 who declared for participating in the democratic council however the experience of this participation soon strengthened the party's left wing it was growing too manifest that combinations bordering on trickery combinations that aimed at securing further leadership in the revolution for the professional elements with the assistance of the fusionists who had lost ground among the lower levels of the people offered no escape from the impasse into which the lackness of bourgeois democracy had driven the revolution by the time the democratic Soviet its ranks filled with professional elements became a pre-parliament readiness to break with this institution had matured in our party end of chapter 10 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk from October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky chapter 11 the SRs and Mensheviks we were confronted with the question whether the SRs would follow us in this path this group was in the process of formation but this process according to the standards of our party went on too slowly and irresolutely at the outset of the revolution the SRs proved the predominating party in the whole field of political life peasants soldiers even were working men voted on mass for the SRs the party itself had not expected anything of the kind and more than once it looked as if it were in danger of being swamped in the wave of its own success excluding the purely capitalistic and landholder groups and the professional elements among the intellectuals one and all voted for the revolutionary populists party this was natural in the initial stages of the revolution when class lines had not had time to reveal themselves when the aspirations of the so-called united revolutionary front found expression in the diffuse program of a party that was ready to welcome equally the working men who feared to break away from the peasant the peasant who was seeking land and liberty the intellectual attempting to guide both of them the chinovnik office holder endeavouring to adjust himself to the new regime when Karenski who had been counted a labourite in the period of Xarism joined the SRs party after the victory of the revolution that party's popularity began to grow in proportion as Karenski mounted the rungs of power out of respect not always of a platonic nature for the war minister many colonels and generals hastened to enrol in the party of the erstwhile terrorists old SRs with revolutionary traditions regarded with some uneasiness the ever increasing number of March SRs that is such party members as had discovered within themselves a revolutionary populist soul only in March after the revolution had overthrown the old regime and placed the revolutionary populists in authority thus within the limits of its formlessness this party contained not only the inner contradictions of the developing revolution but also the prejudices inherent in the backwardness of the peasant masses and the sentimentalism instability and career chasing of the intellectual strata it was perfectly clear that in that form the party could not last long with regard to ideas it proved impotent from the very start politically the guiding role to the Mensheviks who had gone through the school of Marxism and derived from its certain procedures and habits which aided them in finding their bearings in the political situation to the extent of scientifically falsifying the meaning of the current class struggle and securing the hegemony of the liberal bourgeoisie in the highest degree possible under the given circumstances this is why the Mensheviks direct pleaders for the bourgeoisie's right to power exhausted themselves so rapidly and by the time of the October Revolution were almost completely played out the SR's too were losing influence more and more first among the working men then in the army and finally in the villages but towards the time of the October upheaval they remained still a very powerful party numerically however class contradictions were undermining them from within in opposition to the right wing which in its most chauvinist elements Afkentiev, Brezhkov Brezhkov Kaya, Savinkov etc had finally gone over into the counter-revolutionary camp a left wing was forming which strove to preserve its connection with the toiling masses if we merely recall the fact that the SR Afkentiev as Minister of the Interior arrested the peasant land committees composed of SR's for their arbitrary solution of the agrarian question the amplitude of differences within this party will become sufficiently clear to us in its centre stood the party's traditional leader Chernoff a writer of experience well read in socialist literature an experienced hand in factional strife he had constantly remained at the head of the party when party life was being built up in emigrant circles abroad the revolution which had raised the SR party to an enormous height with its first indiscriminating wave automatically raised Chernoff too only to reveal his complete impotence even as compared with the other leading political lights of the first period the paltry resources which had secured to Chernoff a preponderance of the circles abroad proved too light in the scales of the revolution he concentrated his efforts on not taking any responsible decisions evading in all critical cases waiting and abstaining for some little time tactics of this kind secured for him the position as centre between the everdmore diverging flanks but there was no longer any possibility of preserving party unity for long the former terrorist Savinkov took part in Kornilov's conspiracy was in touching unanimity with the counter revolutionary circles of Cossack officers and was preparing an onslaught on Petrograd working men and soldiers among whom there were quite a few left SRs as a sacrifice to the left wing the centre expelled Savinkov from the party but hesitated to raise a hand against Kerensky in the pre-parliament the party showed signs of extreme disruption three groups existed independently though under the banner of one and the same party but none of the groups knew exactly what it wanted the formal domination in this party in the constituent assembly would have meant only a continuation of political prostration end of chapter 11 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rebecca Ditman Liverpool United Kingdom web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk from October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky chapter 12 withdrawing from the pre-parliament the voice of the front before withdrawing from the membership of the pre-parliament where according to Kerensky's and Serotelli's political statistics we were entitled to some half a hundred seats we arranged a conference with the left SR group they refused to follow us claiming that they still had to demonstrate practically before the peasantry the insolvency of the pre-parliament said one of the leaders of the left SR's we deem it necessary to warn you that if you want to withdraw from the pre-parliament in order forthwith to go into the streets for an open fight we shall not follow you the bourgeois fusionist press accused us of striving to kill prematurely the pre-parliament for the very purpose of creating a revolutionary situation at our faction meeting in the pre-parliament it was decided to act independently and not wait for the left SR's our party's declaration proclaimed from the pre-parliament rostrum and explaining why we were breaking from this institution was greeted with a howl of hatred and impotence on the part of the majority groups in the Petrograd Soviet of deputies where our withdrawal from the pre-parliament was approved by an overwhelming majority the leader of the tiny internationalist Menshevik group, Matov explained to us that the withdrawal from the temporary Soviet of the Republic such was the official appellation of this little respected institution will be sensible only in case we proposed immediately to assume an open offensive but the point is that this is just what we intended the prosecutors for the liberal bourgeoisie were right when accusing us of striving to create a revolutionary situation in open insurrection under direct seizure of power we beheld the only way out of the situation again as in the July days the press and all the other organs of so-called public opinion were mobilized against us from the July arsenals were dragged forth the most invenomed weapons which had been temporarily stored away there after the Kornilov days vain efforts the mass was irresistibly moving towards us and its spirit was rising hour by hour from the trenches delicates kept arriving how long said they at the Petrograd Soviet meetings will this impossible situation last the soldiers have told us to declare to you if no decisive steps for peace are made by November the 1st the trenches will be deserted the entire army will rush to the rear this determination was really spreading at the front there the soldiers were passing on from one unit to another homemade proclamations summoning them not to remain in the trenches later than the first snowfall you have forgotten about us the delegates on foot from the trenches exclaimed at the Soviet meetings if you find no way out of the situation we shall come here ourselves and with our bayonets we shall disperse our enemies including you in the course of a few weeks the Petrograd council had become the centre of attraction for the whole army after its leading tendency have been changed and new presiding officers elected its resolutions inspired the exhausted and despondent troops at the front with the hope that the way out of the situation could be practically found in the manner proposed by the Bolsheviks by publishing the secret treatise and proposing an immediate truce on all fronts you say that power must pass into the hands of the Soviets grasp it then Yon fear that the front will not support you cast all misgivings aside the soldier masses are with you in overwhelming majority meanwhile the conflict regarding the transfer of the garrison kept on developing almost daily a garrison conference met consisting of committees from the companies regiments and commands the influence of our party in the garrison was established definitely and indestructibly the Petrograd district staff was in a state of extreme perplexity now it would attempt to enter into regular relations with us then again egged on by the leaders of the Central Executive Committee it would threaten us with repressive measures above mention has already been made of organising at the Petrograd Soviet a military revolutionary committee which was intended to be in fact the Soviet staff of the Petrograd garrison in opposition to Kurensky staff but the existence of two staffs is inadmissible the representatives of the fusionist parties dogmatically admonished us but is a situation admissible wherein the garrison mistrusts the official staff and fears that the transfer of soldiers from Petrograd has been dictated by a new count of revolutionary machination we retorted the creation of a second staff means insurrection came the reply from the right your military revolutionary committees task will not be so much to verify the operative projects and orders the military authorities as the preparation and execution of an insurrection against the present government this objection was just but for that very reason it did not frighten anybody an overwhelming majority of the Soviet were aware of the necessity of overthrowing the coalition power the more circumstantially the Mensheviks and SRs demonstrated that the military revolutionary committee would inevitably turn into an organ of insurrection the greater the eagerness with which the Petrograd Soviet supported the new fighting organisation the military revolutionary committees first act was to appoint commissioners to all parts of the Petrograd garrison the most important institutions of the capital and environs from various quarters we were receiving communications that the government or more correctly the government parties were actively organising and arming their forces from various arms depots governmental and private rifles revolvers machine guns and cartridges were being brought forth for arming cadets students and bourgeois youths in general it was necessary to take immediate preventative measures commissioners were appointed to all arms depots almost without opposition they become masters of the situation to be sure the commandants and proprietors of the depots tried not to recognise them but a mere application to the soldiers committee or the employee of each institution suffice to cause the immediate breakdown of the opposition after that arms were issued only on order of our commissioners even prior to that regiments of the Petrograd garrison had their commissioners but these had been appointed by the central executive committee that after the dune congress of soviets and particularly after dune the 18th demonstration which revealed the ever growing power of the Bolsheviks the fusionist parties had almost entirely deprived the Petrograd Soviet of any practical influence on the course of events in the revolutionary capital the leadership of the Petrograd garrison was concentrated in the hands of the central executive committee now the task everywhere was to put in the Petrograd Soviet commissioners this was achieved with the most energetic cooperation of the soldier masses the progress by speakers of various parties had the result invariably that regiment after regiment declared it would recognise only the Petrograd soviets commissioners and would not budge a step without its decision an important role in appointing these commissioners was played by the Bolsheviks military organization before the july days it had developed a widespread agitational activity on july 5th a battalion of cyclists brought by Karenski to Petrograd battered down the isolated Karenski mansion where our party's military organization was quartered the majority of leaders and many privates among the members were arrested the publications were stopped the printing shop was wrecked only by degrees did the organization begin to repair its machinery afresh conspiratively this time numerically it comprised in its ranks but a very insignificant part of the Petrograd garrison a few hundred men all told but there were among them many soldiers resolute and with heart and soul devoted to the resolution who had passed through Karenski's prisons in july and august all of them placed themselves at the military revolutionary committees disposal and were being assigned to the most responsible fighting posts however it would not be superfluous to remark that precisely the members of our party's military organization assumed in october an attitude of an extraordinary caution and even some skepticism towards the idea of an immediate insurrection the close character of the organization and its officially military character involuntarily inclined its leaders to underestimate the purely technical and organizational resources of the uprising and from this point we were undoubtedly weak our strength lay in the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and their readiness to fight under our banner parallel with the organizing activity a stormy agitation was being carried on this was a period of incessant meetings at works in the modern and chineselli circuses at clubs in barracks the atmosphere at all the meetings was charged with electricity each mention of the insurrection was greeted with a storm of plaudits and shouts of delight the bourgeois press merely increased the state of universal panic an order issued over my signature to the cestriesque munitions factory to issue 5,000 rifles to the red guard evoked an indescribable panic in bourgeois circles the general massacre in course of preparation was talked and written about everywhere of course this did not in the least prevent the working men of the cestriesque munitions factory from handing the arms over to the red guards the more frantically the bourgeois press slandered and baited us the more ardently the masses responded to our call it was growing clearer and clearer for both sides that the crisis must break within the next few days the press of the SRs and Mensheviks was sounding an alarm the revolution is in the greatest danger a repetition of the due lie days is being prepared but on a much wider basis and therefore still more destructive in its consequences in his Novaya Zin Gorky daily prophesied the approaching wreck of all civilization in general the socialistic veneer of the bourgeois intellectuals was wearing off at the approach of the stern domination of the workers dictatorship but on the other hand the soldiers of even the most backward regiments hailed with delight the military revolutionary committees commissioners delegates came to us from Cossack units in the minority of military cadets they promised at least to assure the neutrality of their units in case of an open conflict manifestly Karensky's government was losing its foundation the district staff began negotiations with us and proposed a compromise in order to size up the enemy's full resistance we entered into Port Palais but the staff was nervous now they exhorted then threatened us they even declared our commissioners to be without power which however did not in the least affect their work in accord with the staff the central executive committee appointed captain of staff Malevsky to be chief commissioner for the Petrograd military district and magnanimously consented to recognize our commissioners on condition of their being subordinate to this chief commissioner the proposal was rejected and the negotiations broken off prominent Mensheviks and SRs came to us as intermediaries exhorted threatened and foretold our doom and the doom of the revolution end of chapter 12 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom web address mercuriospirit.co.uk from October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky chapter 13 the Petrograd Soviet day at this period the Smolny building was already completely in the hands of the Petrograd Soviet and of our party the Mensheviks and the SRs transferred their political activity to the Marionsky palace where the infant pre-parliament was already expiring in the pre-parliament Karensky delivered a great speech in which stormily applauded by the bourgeois wing he endeavored to conceal his impotence behind clamorous threats the staff made its last attempt at opposition to all units of the garrison to appoint two delegates to conferences concerning the removal of troops from the capital the first conference was called for October the 22nd at 11pm from the regiments we immediately received information about it by telephone we issued a call for a garrison conference at 11am with all a part of the delegates did get to the staff quarters only to declare that without the Petrograd Soviet's decision they would not move anywhere almost unanimously the garrison conference confirmed its allegiance to the military revolutionary committee objections came only from official representatives of the former Soviet parties but they found no response whatsoever among the regimental delegates the staff's attempt brought out only more strikingly that we were standing on firm ground in the front rank there was the Volhynian regiment the very one which on July the 4th with its band playing had invaded the Tarida palace in order to put down the Bolsheviks as already mentioned earlier the central executive committee had charge of the Petrograd Soviet's treasury and its publications an attempt to obtain even a single one of these publications brought no results beginning with the end of September we initiated a series of measures toward creating an independent newspaper of the Petrograd Soviet but all printing establishments were occupied and their owners boycotted us with the assistance of the central executive committee it was decided to arrange for a Petrograd Soviet day for the purpose of developing a widespread agitation and collecting pecuniary resources for establishing a newspaper about a fortnight before this day was set for October the 22nd and consequently it coincided with the moment of the open outburst of the insurrection with complete assurance the hostile press announced that on October the 22nd an armed insurrection of the Bolsheviks would occur in the streets of Petrograd that the insurrection would occur nobody had any doubt they only tried to determine exactly when they guessed they prophesied striving in this way to force a denial or confession on our part but the soviet calmly and confidently marched forward making no answer to the howl of bourgeois public opinion October the 22nd became the reviewing day for the forces of the proletarian army it went off magnificently in every respect in spite of the warnings coming from the right that blood would flow in torrents in the streets of Petrograd the masses of the populace were pouring in floods to the Petrograd Soviet meetings all our oratorial forces were mobilized all public places were filled meetings were held unceasingly for hours at a stretch they were addressed by speakers of our party by delegates arriving from the soviet congress by representatives from the front by left SRs and by anarchists public buildings were flooded by waves of working men soldiers and sailors there had not been many gatherings like this even in the time of the revolution uproads a considerable mass of the petty town folk less frightened than aroused by the shouts warnings and baiting of the bourgeois press waves of people by tens of thousands of people's house building rolled through the corridors filled the halls on the iron columns huge garlands of human heads hands and feet were hanging like bunches of grapes the air was so charged with electric tension that heralds the most critical moments of revolution down with Korenski's government down with the wall all power to the soviets not one of the ranks of the previous soviet parties ventured to appear before those colossal throngs with a word of reply the Petrograd Soviet held undivided sway in reality the campaign had already been won it only remained to deal the last military blow to the spectral authority the most cautious in our midst were reporting that there still remained units that were not with us the Cossacks the cavalry regiment the Semyonsky Regiment the cyclists commissioners and aditators were assigned to these units their reports sounded perfectly satisfactory the red hot atmosphere was infecting one and all and the most conservative elements of the army were losing the strength to withstand the general tendency of the Petrograd garrison in the Semyonsky Regiment which was considered the bulwark of Korenski's government I was present at a meeting which took place in the open air the most prominent speakers of the right wing addressed it they clung to the conservative guard regiments as to the last support of the coalition power nothing would avail by an overwhelming majority of votes the regiment expressed itself for us and did not even give the ex-ministers a chance to finish their speeches the troops which still opposed the soviet watchwords were made up mainly of officers volunteers and generally of bourgeois intellectuals and semi-intellectuals the masses of peasants and workmen were with us one and all the demarcation ran as a distinct social line the fortress of Peter and Paul is the central military brace at Petrograd as commandant thereof we appointed a young ensign he proved the best man for the post and within a few hours he became master of the situation the lawful authorities withdrew biding their time the element regarded as unreliable for us were the cyclists who in July had smashed our party's military organization in the Koshinsky mansion and taken possession of the mansion itself on the 23rd I went to the fortress about 2pm within the courtyard a meeting was being held the speakers of the right wing were cautious and evasive in the extreme painstakingly avoiding the question of Karensky whose name inevitably aroused shouts of protest and indignation even among the soldiers we were listened to and our advice was followed about four o'clock the cyclists assembled nearby in the modern circus for a battalion meeting among the speakers appearing there was quartermaster general Paradilov he spoke with extreme caution the days had been left far behind when official and semi-official speakers referred to the party of the workers merely as to the gang of traitors and hired agents of the German Kaiser the lieutenant commander of the staff accosted me with we really ought to be able to come to some agreement but it was already too late the whole battalion with only 30 dissenting votes had voted for handing over all power to the Soviets End of Chapter 13 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web Address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 14 The Beginning of the Revolution The government of Kurensky was relentlessly looking for refuge now one way now another two new cyclist battalions and the Zenith battery were called back from the front and an attempt was made to call back some companies of cavalry The cyclists telegraphed while on the road to the Petrograd Soviet We are led to Petrograd without knowing the reasons request explanations We ordered them to stop and send a delegation to Petrograd Their representatives arrived and declared at a meeting of the Soviet that the battalion was entirely with us This was greeted by enthusiastic cheers The battalion received orders to enter the city immediately The number of delegates from the front arrived on the day They came to get information about the situation They gathered our literature and went to bring the message to the front that the Petrograd Soviet was conducting a struggle for the power of the workers, soldiers and peasants The men in the trenches will support you they told us All the old army committees which had not been re-elected for the last four or five months sent threatening telegrams to us which however made no impression We knew that these committees were no less out of touch with the rank and file of the soldiers than the Central Executive Committee with the local Soviets The Military Revolutionary Committee appointed commissaries to all railway depots These commissaries kept a watchful eye upon all the arriving and departing trains and especially upon the movement of troops Continuous telephone and motor car communication was established with the neighbouring cities and their garrisons The Soviets of all the communities near Petrograd were charged with the duty of vigilantly preventing any counter-revolutionary troops or rather troops misled by the government from entering the capital The railroad officials of lower rank and the workmen recognised our commissaries immediately Difficulties arose on the 24th at the telephone station They stopped connecting us The cadets took possession of the station and under their protection the telephone operators began to oppose the Soviet This was the first appearance of the future sabotage The Military Revolutionary Committee sent a detachment to the telephone station and placed two small cannons there In this way, the seizing of all departments of the government and instruments of administration was started The sailors and red guards occupied the telegraph station, the post office and other institutions Measures were taken to take possession of the state bank The centre of the government the Institute of Smolny was turned into a fortress There were in the garret as a heritage of the old Central Executive Committee a score of machine guns but they were in poor condition and had been entirely neglected by the caretakers We ordered an additional machine gun company to the Smolny Institute Early in the morning the sailors rolled the machine gun with a deafening rumble over the cement floors of the long and half dark corridors of the building Out of the doors, the frightened faces of the few SRs and Mensheviks were looking and wondering The Soviet held daily meetings in the Smolny and so did the Garrison Council On the third floor of the Smolny in a small corner room the Military Revolutionary Committee a continuous session There was centred all the information about the movements of troops the spirit of the soldiers and workers the agitation in the barracks the undertakings of the pogrom instigators the councils of the bourgeois politicians the life at the Winter Palace the plans of the former Soviet parties Informers came from all sides There came workers, officers, porters socialist cadets, servants, ladies Many brought pure nonsense Others gave serious and valuable information The decisive moment drew near It was apparent that there was no going back On the evening of the 24th of October Kerensky appeared in the Preliminary Parliament and demanded approval of repressive measures against the Bolsheviks The Preliminary Parliament, however was in a sad state of indetermination and complete disintegration The Constitutional Democrats tried to persuade the right SRs to adopt a vote of confidence The right SRs exercised pressure upon the centre of the political party The left wing conducted a policy of parliamentary opposition After many conferences, debates, hesitations the resolution of the left wing was adopted This resolution condemned the rebellious movement of the Soviet but the responsibilities for the movement were laid at the door of the anti-democratic policy of the government The Mail brought scores of letters daily informing us of death sentences pronounced against us of infernal machines of the expected blowing up of the Shmolni etc. The bourgeois press howled wildly moved by hatred and terror Gorky, who had forgotten all about the Song of the Falcon continued to prophesy in his Navaya Jinn the approach of the end of the world The members of the Military Revolutionary Committee did not leave the Shmolni during the entire week They slept on sofas and only at odd intervals Wakened by couriers, scouts, cyclists telegraphed messengers and telephone calls The night of the 24th 25th was the most restless We received a telephone communication from Pavlosky that the government had called artillery from the Peterhof School of Ensigns At the Winter Palace, Kurensky gathered the cadets and officers We gave out orders over the telephone to place on all the roads leading to Petrograd reliable military defence and to send agitators to meet the military detachment called by the government In case persuasion would not help, they were instructed to use armed force All the negotiations were held over the telephone in the open and therefore were accessible to the agents of the government The commissaries informed us over the telephone that on all the roads leading to Petrograd our friends were on the alert A cadet detachment from Iranian Baume, nevertheless succeeded in getting by our military defence during the night and over the telephone we followed their further movements The outer guard of the Shmolni was strengthened by another company Communications with all the detachments of the garrison went on continuously The companies on guard in all the regiments were awake The delegates of every detachment were day and night at the disposal of the Military Revolutionary Committee An order was given to suppress the agitation of the Black Hundred without reserve and at the first attempt at pogroms on the streets arms should be used without mercy During this decisive night all the most important points of the city passed into our hands, almost without any opposition, without struggle and without bloodshed The state bank was guarded by a government detachment and an armored car The building was surrounded on all sides by our troops The armored car was taken by an unexpected attack and the bank went over into the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committee without a single shot being fired There was on the River Neva behind the Franco-Russian plant the cruiser Aurora which was still under repair Its crew consisted entirely of sailors devotedly loyal to the revolution When Cornelof, at the end of August threatened Petrograd the sailors of the Aurora were called by the government to guard the Winter Palace and though even then they already hated the government of Karensky, they realised that it was their duty to dam the wave of the counter-revolution and they took their post without objection When the danger passed, they were sent back Now, in the days of the October Uprising, they were too dangerous The Aurora was ordered by the Minister of the Navy to weigh anchor to get out of Petrograd The crew informed us immediately of this order We annulled it and the cruiser remained where it was, ready at any moment to put all its military forces and means at the disposal of the Soviets At the dawn of the 25th, a man and a woman employed in the party's printing office came to Shmolny and informed us that the government had closed the official journal of our body and the new Gazette of the Petrograd Soviet The printing office was sealed by some agent of the government The military revolution of the government The military revolutionary committee immediately recalled the orders and took both publications under its protection In joining upon the Gallant-Wolensky Regiment the great honour of securing the free socialist press against counter-revolutionary attempts The printing after that went on without interruption and both publications appeared on time The government was still in session at the Winter Palace, but it was no more than its own shadow As a political power, it no longer existed On the 25th of October, the Winter Palace was gradually surrounded by our troops from all sides At one o'clock in the afternoon, I declared at the session of the Petrograd Soviet in the name of the military revolutionary committee that the government of Kerensky had ceased to exist and that forthwith and until the all Russian convention of the Soviets might decide otherwise, the power was to pass into the hands of the military revolutionary committee A few days earlier, Lenin left Finland and was hiding in the outskirts of the city in the working men's quarters On the evening of the 25th he came secretly to the Shmolny According to newspaper information it seemed to him that the issue would be a temporary compromise between ourselves and the Kerensky government The bourgeois press had so often clamoured about the approach of the revolution about the demonstration of armed soldiers on the street about pillaging and unavoidable streams of blood that now this press failed to notice the revolution which was really taking place and accepted the negotiations of the general staff with us at their face value Meanwhile, without any chaos without street fights, without firing or bloodshed, the government institutions were occupied one after another by severe and disciplined detachments of soldiers, sailors and red guards in accordance with the exact telephone orders given from the small room on the third floor of the Shmolny Institute In the evening, a preliminary session of the all Russian convention of Soviets was held In the name of the Central Executive Committee Dan presented a report He presented an indictment of the rebellious usurpers and insurgents and attempted to frighten the convention with a vision of the inevitable failure of the insurrection, which, he claimed would be suppressed by the forces from the front His address sounded unconvincing and out of place within the walls of a hall where the overwhelming majority of the delegates were enthusiastically observing the victorious advance of the Petrograd Revolution By this time, the Winter Palace was surrounded but it was not yet taken From time to time, there were shots from the windows of the sieges who were closing in slowly and cautiously From the Petropavlovsk fortress two or three shells from cannons were directed at the palace Their thunder was heard at the Shmolny Matov spoke with helpless indignation from the platform of the convention about civil war and especially about the siege of the Winter Palace where among the ministers there were, oh horror, members of the Menshevik party The sailors who came to bring information from the battle place around the palace took the floor against him They reminded the accusers of the offensive of the 18th of June of the treacherous policy of the old government of the re-establishment of the death penalty for soldiers of the annihilation of the revolutionary organization and wound up by vowing to win or die They also brought word of the first victims from our ranks in the battle before the palace All arose as if at an unseen signal and with a unanimity which could be created only by a high moral inspiration sang the funeral march He who lived through that moment will never forget it The session was interrupted It was impossible to deliberate theoretically the question of the means of reconstructing the government among the echoes of the fighting and shooting under the walls of the Winter Palace where the fate of that very government was being decided in a practical way The taking of the palace however was rather slow and this caused hesitation among the less determined elements of the convention The orators of the right wing prophesied on near destruction All anxiously awaited news from the arena of the palace presently Antonov appeared who directed the operations against the palace A death-like silence fell upon the hall The Winter Palace was taken Kerensky had fled Other ministers had been arrested and consigned to the fortress of Petropavlovsk The first chapter of the October Revolution was over The right revolutionists and the Mensheviki altogether 60 men that is about one tenth of the convention left the session in protest As there was nothing else left to them they placed the entire responsibility for the coming events upon the Bolsheviki and the left SRs The latter were passing through moments of indecision The past tied them strongly to the party of Chernov The right wing of this party swerved to the middle and petty bourgeois elements to the intellectuals of the middle classes to the well-to-do elements of the villages and on all decisive questions went hand in hand with the liberal bourgeoisie against us The more revolutionary elements of the party reflecting the radicalism of the social demands of the poorest masses of the peasantry gravitated to the proletariat and their party They feared, however, to sever the umbilical cord which linked them to their old party When we left the preliminary parliament they refused to follow us and warned us against adventurers but the insurrection put before them the dilemma of taking sides for or against the Soviets Not without hesitation they assembled on our side of the barricades End of Chapter 15 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 16 The Formation of the Soviet of the People's Commissaries The victory in Petrograd was complete The power went over entirely to the Military Revolutionary Committee We issued our first decree abolishing the death penalty and ordering re-elections in the army committees etc But here we discovered that we were cut off from the provinces The higher authorities of the railroads post office and telegraph were against us The army committees, the municipalities the Zemtos continued to bombard the Smolny with threatening telegrams in which they declared outright war upon us and promised to sweep the insurgents out within a short time Our telegrams, decrees and explanations did not reach the provinces for the Petrograd telegraph agency refused to service In this atmosphere created by the isolation of the capital and the rest of the country alarming and monstrous rumours easily sprang up in the country When finally convinced that the Soviet had really taken over the powers of the government that the old government was arrested that the streets of Petrograd were dominated by armed workers The bourgeois press as well as the press which was for affecting a compromise started a campaign of incomparable madness indeed There was not a lie or libel which was not mobilised against the Military Revolutionary Committee its leaders or its commissaries On the 26th Petrograd Soviet which was attended by the delegates from the All Russian Council members of the garrison conference and numerous members of the various parties Here, for the first time in nearly six months, spoke Lenin and Zinoviev who were given a stormy ovation The jubilation over the recent victory was marred somewhat by apprehensions as to how the country would take to the new revolt and as to the Soviet's ability to retain control In the evening an executive session of the Council of Soviets was held Lenin introduced two decrees on peace and on the land question After brief discussion both decrees were adopted unanimously It was at this session too that a new central authority was created to be known as the Council of People's Commissaries The central committee of our party tried to win the approval of the left SRs who were invited to participate in establishing the Soviet government They hesitated on the ground that in their view this government should bear a coalition character within the Soviet parties But the Mensheviki and the right SRs broke entirely with the Council of Soviets deeming a coalition with anti-Soviet parties necessary There was nothing left for us to do but to let the party of left SRs persuade their neighbours to the right to return to the revolutionary camp And while they were engaged in this hopeless task we thought it our duty to take the responsibility for the government entirely upon our party The list of People's Commissaries was composed exclusively of Bolsheviki There was undoubtedly some political danger in such a course The change proved too precipitant One need but remember that the leaders of this party were only yesterday still under indictment and a statute law number 108, that is accused of high treason But there was no other alternative The other Soviet groups hesitated and evaded the issue preferring to adopt a waiting policy Finally we became convinced that only our party could set up a revolutionary government End of chapter 16 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Ditman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 17 The first days of the new regime The decrees on land and peace approved by the council were printed in huge quantities and through delegates from the front peasant pedestrians arriving from the villages and agitators sent by us to the trenches in the provinces were strewn broadcast all over the country Simultaneously the work of organizations and arming the Red Guards was carried on Together with the old garrison and the sailors the Red Guard was doing hard patrol duty The council of people's commissaries got control of one government department after another, though everywhere encountering the passive resistance of the higher and middle grade officials The former Soviet parties tried their utmost to find support in this class and organize a sabotage of the new government Our enemies felt certain that the whole affair was a mere episode that in a day or two at most a week the Soviet government would be overthrown The first foreign councillors of the embassies impelled quite as much by curiosity as by necessary business on hand appeared at the Smolny Institute Newspaper correspondents hurried thither with their notebooks and cameras Everyone hastened to catch a glimpse of the new government being sure that in a day or two it will be too late Perfect order reigned in the city The sailors, soldiers and Red Guards bore themselves in these first days with excellent discipline and nobly supported the regime of stern revolutionary order In this camp, fear arose lest the episode should become too protracted and so the first force for attacking the new government was being hastily organized In this, the initiative was taken by the social revolutionists and Minsheviki In the preceding period they would not, and dared not take all the power into their own hands In keeping with their provisional political position they contented themselves with serving in the coalition government in the capacity of assistants, critics and defenders of the bourgeoisie During all elections, they conscientiously anithematized the liberal bourgeoisie while in the government they just as regularly combined with it In the first six months of the revolution they managed, as a result of this policy to lose absolutely all the confidence of the populace and army And now, the October revolt was dashing them from the helm of the state And yet, only yesterday they considered themselves the masters of the situation The Bolshevik leaders whom they persecuted were hiding, as under Hazarism Today, the Bolsheviki were in power while yesterday's coalitionist ministers and their co-workers found themselves cast aside and suddenly deprived of every bit of influence upon the further course of events They would not and could not believe that this sudden revolt marked the beginning of a new era They preferred to consider it as merely accidental the result of some misunderstanding which could be removed by a few energetic speeches and accusational newspapers They preferred to consider it as merely accidental speeches and accusational newspaper articles But every hour they encountered more and more insurmountable obstacles This is what caused their blind, truly furious hatred The bourgeois politicians did not venture to be sure, to get too close to danger They pushed to the front the social revolutionists and Mensheviki who, in the attack upon us, acquired all that energy which they had lacked during the period when they were a semi-governing power and circulated the most amazing rumours and lies In their name it was that the proclamations containing open appeals to crush the new government were issued It was they too who organised the government officials for sabotage and the cadets for military resistance On the 27th and 28th we continued to receive persistent threats by telegraph from army committees town-dumers, vixels, zemtos and organisations which had charge of the management of the railroad union On the Nevsky Prospect, the principal thoroughfare of the capital's bourgeoisie things were becoming more and more lively The bourgeois youth was emerging from its stupa and urged on by the press was developing a wider and wider agitation against the Soviet government With the help of the bourgeois crowd the cadets were disarming individual Red Guardsmen On the side streets, Red Guardsmen and sailors were being shot down A group of cadets seized the telephone station Attempts were made by the same side to seize the telegraph office Finally, we learned that three armoured cars had fallen into the hands of some illegal military organisation The bourgeois elements were clearly raising their heads The newspapers heralded the fact that we had but a few hours to live Our friends intercepted a few secret orders which made it clear, however that a militant organisation had been formed to fight the Petrograd Soviet The leading place in this organisation was taken by the so-called committee for the defence of the revolution organised by the local Duma and the Central Executive Committee of the former regime Here and there, right social revolutionists and Mensheviki held sway At the disposal of this committee were the cadets, students and many counter-revolutionary army officers who sought from under cover of the coalition to deal the Soviets a mortal blow This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Ditman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 18 The Cadet Uprising of October 29th The stronghold of the counter-revolutionary organisation was the cadet schools and the engineering castle where considerable arms and ammunition was stored and from where attacks were made upon the revolutionary government's headquarters Detachments of red guards and sailors had surrounded the cadet schools and were sending in messengers demanding the surrender of all arms Some scattering shots came in reply The besiegers were trampled upon Crowds of people gathered around them and not infrequently stray shots fired from the windows would wound passes by The skirmishes were assuming an indefinitely prolonged character and this threatened the revolutionary detachments with demoralisation It was necessary therefore to adopt the most determined measures The task of disarming the cadets was assigned to the commander of the Petropavlosk fortress Ensign B He closely surrounded the cadet schools brought up some armoured cars and artillery and gave the cadets ten minutes time to surrender Renewed firing from the windows was the answer at first At the expiration of the ten minutes B ordered an artillery charge The very first shots made yawning breaches in the walls of the school house The cadets surrendered though many of them tried to save themselves by flight firing as they fled Considerable ranker was created such as always accompanied civil war The sailors undoubtedly committed many outrages upon individual cadets The bourgeois press later accused the sailors and the soviet government of inhumanity and brutality It never mentioned however the fact that the revolt of October the 25th to the 26th had been brought about with hardly any firing or sacrifice and that only the counter-revolutionary conspiracy which was organised by the bourgeoisie and which threw the young generation into the flame of civil war against the workers, soldiers and sailors led to unavoidable severities and sacrifices The 29th of October marked a decided change in the mood of the inhabitants of Petrograd Events took on a more tragic character At the same time, our enemies realised that the situation was far more serious than they thought at first and that the soviet had not the slightest intention of relinquishing the power it had just won to oblige the junkers and the capitalistic newspapers The work of clearing Petrograd of counter-revolutionary centres was carried on intensively The cadets were almost all disarmed The participators in the insurrection were arrested and either imprisoned in the Petropovlask fortress or deported to Kronstadt The provocations which openly preach revolt against Soviet authority were promptly suppressed Orders were issued for the arrest of such of the leaders of the former Soviet parties whose names figured on the intercepted counter-revolutionary edicts All military resistance in the capital was crushed, absolutely Next came a long and exhausting struggle against the sabotage of the bureaucrats, technical workers, clerks etc These elements, which by their earning capacity belonged largely to the downtrodden class of society themselves with the bourgeois class on the conditions of their life and by their general psychology They had sincerely and faithfully served the government and its institutions when it was headed by Tsarism They continued to serve the government when the authority passed over into the hands of the bourgeois imperialists They were inherited with all their knowledge and technical skill by the coalition government in the next period of the revolution But when the revolting working men, soldiers and peasants flung the parties of the exploiting classes and tried to take the management of affairs into their own hands then the bureaucrats and clerks flew into a passion and absolutely refused to support the new government in any way More and more extensive became the sabotage which was organised mostly by social revolutionists and Mensheviki and which was supported by funds furnished by the banks and the allied embassies End of chapter 18 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 19 Kerensky's advance on Petrograd The stronger the Soviet government became in Petrograd the more the bourgeois groups placed their hopes on military aid from without The Petrograph Telegraph Agency the Railroad Telegraph and the Radio Telegraph Station of Starskoye Selo brought from every side news of huge forces marching on Petrograd with the object of crushing the rebels there and establishing order Kerensky was making flying trips to the front and the bourgeois papers reported he was leading innumerable forces against the Bolshevik We found ourselves cut off from the rest of the country as the telegraphers refused to service but the soldiers who arrived by tens and hundreds on commissions from their respective regiments invariably said to us have no fears of the front it is entirely on your side you need but give the word and we will send to your aid even this very day a division or a call It was the same in the army as everywhere else the masses were for us and the upper classes against us In the hands of the latter was the military technical machinery various parts of the vast army proved to be isolated one from another we were isolated from both the army and the people Nevertheless the news of the Soviet government at Petrograd and its decrees spread throughout the country and roused the local Soviets to rebel against the old government The reports of Kerensky's advance on Petrograd at the head of some forces or other soon became more persistent and assumed more definite outlines We were informed from Sarkoye Selo that Kossak echelons were not far from there while an appeal signed by Kerensky and General Krasnov was being circulated in Petrograd calling upon the whole garrison to join the government's forces which were expected any hour to enter the capital The cadet insurrection of October the 29th was undoubtedly connected with Kerensky's undertaking only that it broke out too soon owing to determined action on our part the Sarkoye Selo garrison was ordered to demand the approaching Kossak regiments recognition of the Soviet government In the case of refusal the Kossaks were to be disarmed but that garrison proved to be ill-fitted for military operations it had no artillery and no leaders its officers being unfriendly towards the Soviet government The Kossaks took possession of the radio telegraph station at Sarkoye Selo the most powerful one in the country and marched on and made neither initiative nor resolution After the almost bloodless victory at Petrograd the soldiers confidently assumed that matters would take a similar course in the future All that was necessary they thought was to send an agitator to the Kossaks who would lay down their arms the moment the object of the proletarian revolution was explained to them Kornilov's counter-revolutionary uprising was put down by means of speeches and fraternization by agitation and well-planned without a fight, the Kurensky government was overthrown the same methods were now being employed by the leaders of the Tsarskoe Selo Krasno Selo and the Kachina Soviets with General Krasnov's Kossaks but this time they did not work though without determination or enthusiasm the Kossaks did advance individual detachments approached Kachina and Krasno Selo engaged the scanty forces of the local garrisons and sometimes disarmed them the numerical strength of Kurensky's forces we at first had no idea whatever some said that General Krasnov headed 10,000 men others affirmed that he had no more than a thousand while the unfriendly newspapers and circulars announced in letters an inch big that two corps were lined up beyond Tsarkoe Selo there was a general want of confidence in the Petrograd garrison no sooner had it won a bloodless victory than it was called upon to march out against an enemy of unknown numbers and engage in battles of uncertain outcome in the garrison conference the discussion centred about the necessity of sending out more and more agitators and of issuing appeals to the Kossaks for to the soldiers it seemed impossible that the Kossaks would refuse to rise to the point of view which the Petrograd garrison was defending in its struggle nevertheless advanced groups of Kossaks approached quite close to Petrograd and we anticipated that the principal battle would take place in the streets of the city the greatest resolution was shown by the red guards they demanded arms, ammunition and leadership but everything in the military machine was disorganized and out of gear owing partly to disuse and partly to evil intent the officers had resigned many had fled the rifles were in one place and the cartridges in another matters were still worse with artillery the cannons, gun carriages and military stores were all in different places and all these had to be groped for in the dark the various regiments did not have at their disposal either sappers tools or field telephones the revolutionary general staff which tried to straighten out things from above encountered insurmountable obstacles the greatest of which was the sabotage of the military technical employees then we decided to appeal directly to the working class we stated that the success of the revolution was most seriously threatened and that it was with them by their energy, initiative and self-denial to save and strengthen the regime of humanitarian and peasant government this appeal met with tremendous practical success almost immediately thousands of working men proceeded towards Karenski's forces and began digging trenches the munition workers manned the cannon themselves obtaining ammunition for them from various stores requisitioned horses brought the guns into the necessary positions and adjusted them organized a commissary department procured gasoline, motors, automobiles requisitioned provisions and forage and put the sanitary trains on a proper footing created in short the entire war machinery which we had vainly endeavored to create from above when scores of heavy guns reached the lines the disposition of our soldiers changed immediately under the cover of the artillery they were ready to repulse the Cossack's attack in the first lines were the sailors and red guards a few officers politically unrelated to us but sincerely attached to their regiments accompanied their soldiers to the lines and directed their operations against Krasnov's Cossacks End of chapter 19 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Ditman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 20 Collapse of Kurensky's Attempt Meanwhile, telegrams spread the report all over the country and abroad that the Bolshevik adventure had been disposed of and that Kurensky had entered Petrograd and was establishing order with an iron hand On the other hand, in Petrograd itself the bourgeois press, emboldened by the proximity of Kurensky's troops, wrote about the complete demoralization of the Petrograd garrison about an irresistible advance of the Cossacks equipped with much artillery and predicted the imminent fall of the Smolny Institute Our chief handicap was, as already stated the lack of suitable mechanical accessories and of men able to direct military operations Even those officers who had conscientiously accompanied their soldiers to the lines declined the position of commander in chief After long deliberation, we hit upon the following combination The garrison council selected a committee of five persons which was entrusted with the supreme control of all operations against the counter-revolutionary forces moving on Petrograd This committee subsequently reached an understanding with Colonel Moravyev, who was in the opposition party under the Kurensky regime and who now, on his own initiative offered his services to the Soviet government On the cold night of October 30th Moravyev and I started an automobile for the lines Wagons with provisions, forage, military supplies and artillery trailed along the road All this was done by the working men of various factories Several times our automobile was stopped on the way by Red Guard patrols who verified our permit Since the first days of the October Revolution every automobile in town had been requisitioned and no automobile could be ridden through the streets of the city or in the outskirts of the capital without a permit from the Smolny Institute The vigilance of the Red Guards was beyond all praise They stood on watch about small campfires rifle in hands hours at a time The sight of these young armed workmen by the campfires in the snow was the best symbol of the proletarian revolution Many guns had been drawn up in position and there was no lack of ammunition The decisive encounter developed on this very day between Krasnoi Sello and Sarkoiz Sello After a fierce artillery duel the Cossacks, who kept on advancing as long as they met no obstacles, hastily withdrew and been fooled all the time by tales of harsh and cruel acts committed by the Bolshevik who wished, as it were, to sell Russia to the German Kaiser They had been assured that almost the entire garrison at Petrograd was impatiently awaiting them as deliverers The first serious resistance completely disorganized their ranks and sealed the fate of Khorensky's entire undertaking The retreat of Krasnoff's Cossacks enabled us to get control of the radio station at Sarkoiz Sello We immediately wireless the news of our victory over Khorensky's forces Our foreign friends informed us subsequently that the German wireless station refused on orders from above to receive this wireless message Footnote I cite here the text of this wireless message Sello Polkovo General Staff 2.10pm The night of October 30, 31st will go down in history Khorensky's attempt to march counter-revolutionary forces upon the capital of the revolution has received a decisive check Khorensky is retreating We are advancing The soldiers, sailors and working men of Petrograd have shown that they can and will gun in hand, affirm the will and power of proletarian democracy The bourgeoisie tried to isolate the army of the revolution and Khorensky attempted to crush it by Cossackism Both have been frustrated The great idea of the reign of a working men's democracy united the ranks of the army and hardened its will The whole country will now come to understand that the Soviet government is not a passing phenomenon but a permanent fact of the supremacy of the workers, soldiers and peasants Khorensky's repulse was the repulse of the middle class the bourgeoisie and the Kornilovites Khorensky's repulse means the affirmation of the people's rights to a free, peaceful life to land, food and power The Khorensky division, by their brilliant charge is strengthening the cause of the proletarian and peasant revolution There can be no return to the past There is still fighting, obstacles and sacrifice ahead of us but the way is open and victory assured Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet government may well be proud of their Khorensky division commanded by Colonel Walden May the names of the fallen never be forgotten All honour to the fighters for the revolution soldiers and the officers who stood by the people Long live revolutionary and socialist Russia in the name of the Council of the People's Commissaries Leon Trotsky, October 31, 1917 The first reaction of the German authorities to the events of October was thus one of fear Fear lest these events provoke disturbances in Germany itself In Austria-Hungary, part of our telegram was accepted and so far as we can tell has been the source of information for all Europe upon the ill-starred attempts of Khorensky to recover his power and its miserable failure Discontent was rife among Krasnov's Cossacks They began sending their scouts into Petrograd and even official delegates to Smolny There they had the opportunity to convince themselves that perfect order reigned in the capital thanks to the Petrograd garrison which unanimously supported the Soviet government The Cossacks disorganisation became the more acute as the absurdity of the plan to take Petrograd with some thousand horsemen dawned upon them for the supports promised them from the front never arrived Krasnov's detachment withdrew to Gachinsk and when we started out wither the next day Krasnov's staff were already virtually prisoners of the Cossacks themselves Our Gachinsk garrison was holding all the most important military positions The Cossacks on the other hand though not yet disarmed were absolutely in no position for further resistance They wanted but one thing to be allowed as soon as possible to return to the Don region or at least back to the front Gachinsk palace presented a curious sight At every entrance stood a special guard while at the gates were artillery and armoured cars Sailors, soldiers and red guards occupied the royal apartments decorated with precious paintings scattered upon the tables made of expensive wood lay soldiers clothes, pipes and sardine boxes In one of the rooms General Krasnov's staff had established itself on the floor lay mattresses, caps and great coats The representative of the Revolutionary War Committee who escorted us entered the quarters of the General's staff noisily dropped his rifle butt to the floor and resting upon it announced General Krasnov, you and your staff are prisoners of the Soviet authorities immediately armed red guards barred both doors to be seen, he had again fled as he had done before from the Winter Palace As to the circumstances attending this flight, General Krasnov made a written statement on November the 1st I cite here in full this curious document November the 1st 1917 19 o'clock About 15 o'clock today I was summoned by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Krorensky, he was very agitated and nervous General, he said You have betrayed me, your Cossacks hear positively say that they will arrest me and turn me over to the sailors Yes, I answered, there is talk about it and I know that you have no sympathisers here at all But are the officers too of the same mind? Yes, the officers are especially dissatisfied with you Then what am I to do? I'll have to commit suicide If you are an honest man you will proceed immediately to Petrograd under a flag of truce and report to the Revolutionary Committee where you will talk things over as the head of the government Yes, I'll do that, General I will furnish a guard for you and will ask that a sailor accompany you No, anyone but a sailor don't you know that Debenko is here? No, I don't know who Debenko is He is an enemy of mine Well, that can't be helped When one plays for great stakes he must be prepared to lose all All right, only I shall go at night Why, that will be flight Go calmly and openly so that everyone can see you are fleeing Well, all right only you must provide me a dependable convoy All right I went and called out a Cossack from the 10th Don Cossack Regiment a certain Ryskov and ordered him to appoint 8 Cossacks to guard the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Half an hour later the Cossacks came and reported that Karenski had gone already that he had fled I gave an alarm and ordered a search for him I believe that he cannot have escaped from Kuchinsk and must now be in hiding here somewhere Commanding the 3rd Corps, Major General Krasnov Thus ended this undertaking Our opponents still would not yield, however and did not admit that the question of government power was settled They continued to base their hopes on the front Many leaders of the former Soviet parties Chernov, Serotely, Abkientyev Gots and others went to the front, entered into negotiations with the old army committees and according to newspaper reports tried even in the camp to form a new ministry All this came to naught The old army committees had lost all their significance and intensive work was going on at the front in connection with the conferences and councils called for the purpose of reorganising all army organisations In these re-elections the Soviet government was everywhere victorious From Kuchinsk our divisions proceeded along the railroad in the direction of the Lugareva and Peskov On the way they met a few more train loads of shock troops and Cossacks which had been called out by Kurensky or which individual generals had sent over With one of these echelons there was even an armed encounter But most of the soldiers that were sent from the front to Petrograd declared as soon as they met with representatives of the Soviet forces that they had been deceived and that they would not lift a finger against the government of soldiers and working men End of Chapter 20 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 21 Internal Friction In the meantime, the struggle for Soviet control spread all over the country In Moscow especially this struggle took on an extremely protracted and bloody character Perhaps not the least important cause of this was the fact that the leaders of the revolt did not at once show the necessary determination in attacking In civil war, more than in any other victory can be ensured only by a determined and persistent course of massillation To engage in parlies is dangerous merely to mark time is suicidal We are dealing here with the masses who have never held any power in their hands who are therefore most wanting in political self-confidence Any hesitation at revolutionary headquarters demoralizes them immediately It is only when a revolutionary party steadily and resolutely makes for its goal that it can help the toilers to overcome their century-old instincts of slavery and lead them on to victory And only by these means of aggressive charges can victory be achieved with the smallest expenditure of energy and the least number of sacrifices But the great difficulty is to acquire such firm and positive tactics The people's want of confidence in their own power and their lack of political experience are naturally reflected in their leaders who, in their turn, find themselves subjected besides to the tremendous pressure of bourgeois public opinion from above The liberal bourgeoisie with contempt and indignation the mere idea of the possibility of a working-class government and gave free vent to their feelings on the subject in the innumerable organs at their disposal Close behind them trailed the intellectuals who, with all their professions of radicalism and all the socialistic coating of their world philosophy are, in the depths of their hearts completely steeped in slavish worship of bourgeois strength and administrative ability All these socialistic intellectuals hastily joined the right and considered the ever-increasing strength of the Soviet government as the clear beginning of the end After the representatives of their liberal professions came the petty officials the administrative technicians All those elements which materially and spiritually subsist on the crumbs that fall from the bourgeois table The opposition of these elements was chiefly passive in character especially after the crushing of the cadet insurrection But nevertheless, it might still seem formidable We were being denied cooperation at every step The government officials would either leave the ministry or refuse to work while remaining in it They would turn over neither the business of the department nor its money accounts The telephone operators refused to connect us while our messages were held up or distorted in the telegraph offices We could not get translators, stenographers or even copyists All this could not fail to create such an atmosphere as led various elements in the higher ranks of our own party to doubt whether in the face of a boycott by bourgeois society the toilers could manage to put the machinery of government in working order and continue in power Opinions were voiced as to the necessity of coalition Coalition with whom? With the liberal bourgeoisie But an attempt at coalition with them had driven the revolution into a terrible morass The revolt of the 25th of October was an act of self-preservation on the part of the masses after the period of impotence and treason of the leaders of coalition government in the ranks of so-called revolutionary democracy that is coalition of all the Soviet parties Such a coalition we did in fact propose from the very beginning at the session of the second or Russian council of Soviets on the 25th of October The Kurensky government had been overthrown and we suggested that the council of Soviets take the government into its own hands but the right parties withdrew slamming the door after them and this was the best thing they could have done They represented an insignificant section of the council They no longer had any following in the masses and those classes which were still supported out of mere inertia were coming over to our side more and more Coalition with the right social revolutionists and the Mensheviki could not broaden the social basis of the Soviet government and would at the same time introduce into the composition of this government elements which were completely disintegrated by political skepticism and idolatry of the liberal bourgeoisie The whole strength of the new government lay in the radicalism of its program and the boldness of its actions To tie itself up with Chernoffy and Teracelli factions would mean to bind the new government hand and foot to deprive it of freedom of action and thereby forfeit the confidence of the masses in the shortest possible time Our nearest political neighbours to the right were the so-called left social revolutionists They were in general quite ready to support us but endeavored nevertheless to form a coalition socialist government The management of the railroad union the so-called Vixal the central committee of the postal telegraph employees and the union of government officials were all against us and in the higher circles of our own party voices were being raised as to the necessity of reaching an understanding with these organisations one way or another But on what basis? All the above mentioned controlling organisations of the old period had outlived their usefulness They bore approximately the same relation to the entire lower personnel as did the old army committees to the masses of soldiers in the trenches History had created a big gulf between the higher classes and the lower Unprincipled combinations of these leaders of another day leaders made antiquated by the revolution were doomed to inevitable failure It was necessary to depend wholly and confidently upon the masses in order, jointly with them to overcome the sabotage and the aristocratic pretensions of the upper classes We left it to the left social revolutionists to continue the hopeless efforts for coalition Our policy was, on the contrary to line up the toiling lower classes against the representatives of organisations which supported the Kurensky regime This uncompromising policy caused considerable friction and even division in the upper circles of our party In the central executive committee the left social revolutionists protested against the severity of our measures and insisted upon the necessity for compromises They met with support on the part of some of the Bolsheviki Three people's commissaries gave up their portfolios and left the government A few other party leaders sided with them in principle This created a very deep impression in intellectual and bourgeois circles If the Bolsheviki could not be defeated by the cadets and Krasnov's Cossacks thought they, it is quite clear that the Soviet government must now perish as a result of internal dissension However, the masses never noticed this dissension at all They unanimously supported the Soviet of people's commissaries not only against counter-revolutionary instigators and sabotagers but also against the coalitionists and the skeptics End of chapter 21 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address Mercuriospirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 22 The Fate of the Constituent Assembly When after the Kornilov episode the ruling Soviet parties tried to smooth over their laxness towards the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie they demanded a speedier convocation of the Constituent Assembly Karensky, whom the Soviets had just saved from the two light embraces of his ally, Kornilov found himself compelled to make compromises The call for the Constituent Assembly was issued for the end of November By that time, however circumstances had so shaped themselves that there was no guarantee whatever that the Constituent Assembly would really be convoked The greatest degree of disorganization was taking place at the front Dissertions were increasing every day The mass of soldiers threatened to leave the trenches whole regiments at a time and moved to the rear, devastating everything on their way In the villages, a general seizure of lands and landholders utensils was going on Martial law had been declared in several provinces The Germans continued to advance capturing Riga and threatened Petrograd The right wing of the bourgeoisie was openly rejoicing over the danger that threatened the revolutionary capital The government offices at Petrograd were being evacuated, and Kurensky's government was preparing to move to Moscow All this made the actual convocation of the Constituent Assembly not only doubtful, but hardly even probable From this point of view the October revolution seems to have been the deliverance of the Constituent Assembly as it has been the saviour of the revolution generally When we were declaring that the road to the Constituent Assembly was not by way of Serateli's preliminary parliament but by way of the seizure of the reigns of government by the Soviet we were quite sincere But the interminable delay in convoking the Constituent Assembly was not without effect upon this institution itself Herald in the first days of the revolution it came into being only after 8 or 9 months of bitter class and party struggle It came too late to play a creative role Its internal inadequacy had been predetermined by a single fact a fact which might seem unimportant at first but which subsequently took on tremendous importance for the fate of the Constituent Assembly Numerically the principal revolutionary party in the first epoch was the party of social revolutionists I have already referred to its formlessness and variegated composition The revolution led inevitably to the dismemberment of such of its members as had joined it under the banner of populism The left wing which had a following amongst part of the workers and the vast masses of poor peasants was becoming more and more alienated from the rest This wing found itself in uncompromising opposition to the party and middle bourgeois branches of social revolutionists But the inertness of party organisation and party tradition held back the inevitable process of cleavage The proportional system of election still holds full sway as everyone knows in party lists Since these lists were made up 2 or 3 months before the October Revolution and were not subject to change the left and right social revolutionists still figured in these lists as one and the same party Thus by the time of the October Revolution that is the period when the right social revolutionists were arresting the left and then the left were combining with the Bolshevik for the overthrow of Karenski's ministry the old lists remained in full force And in the elections for the Constituent Assembly the peasants were compelled to vote for lists of names at the head of which stood Karenski followed by those of left social revolutionists who participated in the plot for his overthrow If the months preceding the October Revolution were months of continuous gain in popular support for the left of a general increase in Bolshevik following among workers, soldiers and peasants then this process was reflected within the party of social revolutionists in an increase of the left wing at the expense of the right Nevertheless, on the party lists of the social revolutionists there was a predominance of three to one of old leaders of the right wing of men who had lost all their revolutionary reputation in the days of coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie To this should be added also the fact that the elections themselves were held during the first weeks after the October Revolution The news of the change travelled rather slowly from the capital to the provinces from the cities to the villages the peasantry in many places had but a very vague idea of what was taking place in Petrograd and Moscow They voted for land and liberty for their representatives in the land committees who in most cases gathered under the banner of populism but thereby they were voting for Karensky and Askyentyev who were dissolving the land committees and arresting their members As a result of this there came about the strange political paradox that one of the two parties which dissolved the constituent assembly the left social revolutionists had won its representation by being on the same list of names for the party which gave a majority to the constituent assembly This matter of fact phase of question should give a very clear idea of the extent to which the constituent assembly lagged behind the course of political events and party groupings We must consider the question of principles End of Chapter 22 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebekah Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 23 The Principles of Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship As Marxists we have never been idle worshipers of formal democracy In a society of classes democratic institutions not only do not eliminate class struggle but also give to class interests an utterly imperfect expression The propertied classes always have at their disposal tens and hundreds of means for falsifying subverting and violating the will of the toilers and democratic institutions become still less perfect medium for the expression of the class struggle under revolutionary circumstances Marx called the revolutions the locomotives of history Owing to the open and direct struggle for power the working people acquired much political experience in a short time and passed rapidly from one stage to the next in their development The ponderous machinery of democratic institutions lags behind this evolution all the more the bigger the country and the less perfect the political apparatus The majority in the constituent assembly proved to be social revolutionists and according to parliamentary rules of procedure the control of the government belonged to them but the party of right social revolutionists had a chance to acquire control during the entire pre-October period of the revolution yet they avoided the responsibilities of government leaving the lion's share of it to the liberal bourgeoisie By this very course the right social revolutionists lost the last vestiges of their influence with the revolutionary elements by the time the numerical composition of the constituent assembly formally obliged them to form a government Working class as well as the red guards were very hostile to the party of right social revolutionists The vast majority of soldiers supported the bolshevik The revolutionary elements in the provinces divided their sympathies between the left social revolutionists and the bolshevik The sailors who had played such an important role in revolutionary events were almost unanimously on our side The right social revolutionists, moreover had to leave the Soviets which in October, that is, before the convocation of the constituent assembly had taken the government into their own hands On whom then could a ministry formed by the constituent assembly's majority depend for support It would be backed by the upper classes in the provinces the intellectuals the government officials and temporarily, by the bourgeoisie on the right But such a government would lack all the material means of administration At such a political centre as Petrograd it would encounter irresistible opposition from the very start If under these circumstances the Soviets submitting to the formal logic of democratic conventions had turned the government over to the party of Kerensky and Chernoff such a government compromised and debilitated as it was would only introduce temporary confusion into the political life of the country and would be overthrown by a new uprising in a few weeks The Soviets decided to reduce this belated historical experiment to its lowest terms and dissolve the constituent assembly the very first day it met For this, our party has been most severely censured The dispersal of the constituent assembly has also created a decidedly unfavourable impression among the leading circles of the European socialist parties Kowski has explained in a series of articles written with his characteristic pedantry the interrelation existing between the social revolutionary problems of the proletariat and the regime of political democracy He tries to prove that for the working class it is always expedient in the long run to preserve the essential elements of the democratic order This is, of course, true as a general rule but Kowski has reduced this historical truth to professional banality If in the final analysis it is to the advantage of the proletariat to introduce its class struggle and even its dictatorship through the channels of democratic institutions it does not at all follow that history always affords it the opportunity for obtaining this happy consummation There is nothing in the Marxian theory to warrant the deduction that history always creates such conditions as are most favourable to the proletariat It is difficult to tell now how the course of the revolution would have run if the constituent assembly had been convoked in its second or third month It is quite probable that the then dominant social revolutionary and Menshevik parties would have compromised themselves together with the constituent assembly in the eyes of not only the more active elements supporting the soviets but also the more backward democratic masses who might have been attached through their expectations not to be on the side of the soviets but to that of the constituent assembly Under such circumstances the dissolution of the constituent assembly might have led to new elections in which the party of the left could have secured a majority but the course of events has been different The elections for the constituent assembly occurred in the ninth month of the revolution By that time the class struggle had assumed such intensity that it broke the formal frames of democracy by sheer internal force The proletariat drew the army and the peasantry after it These classes were in a state of direct and bitter war with the right social revolutionists This party owing to the clumsy electoral democratic machinery received a majority in the constituent assembly reflecting the pre-October epoch of the revolution The result was a contradiction which was absolutely irreducible within the limits of formal democracy and only political pedants who do not take into account the revolutionary logic of class relations can in the face of the post-October situation deliver futile lectures to the proletariat on the benefits and advantages of democracy for the cause of the class struggle The question was put by history far more concretely and sharply The constituent assembly owing to the character of its majority was bound to turn over the government to the Chernoff-Korensky and Serateli group Could this group have guided the destinies of the revolution? No. The real kernel of the class revolution has come into irreconcilable conflict with its democratic shell By this situation the fate of the constituent assembly had been sealed Its dissolution became the only possible surgical remedy for the contradiction which had been created not by us but by all the preceding course of events End of Chapter 23 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 24 Peace Negotiations At the historic night session of the Second or Russian Congress of the Soviets the decree on peace was adopted The full text is printed in the appendix At that moment the Soviet government was only becoming established in the important centres of the country and there was very little confidence abroad in its powers The Soviet adopted the decree unanimously but this seemed to many no more than a political demonstration Those who were for a compromise preached at every opportunity would bring no results For, on the one hand, the German imperialists would not recognise and would not deal with us On the other hand our allies would declare war upon us as soon as we should start negotiating a separate peace Under the shadow of these predictions we took our first steps to secure a general democratic peace The decree was adopted on the 26th of October when Karensky and Krasnov were at the gates of Petrograd On the 7th of November we addressed by wireless an invitation and enemies to conclude a general peace In reply the allied governments addressed to General Dukonin then Commander-in-Chief through their military attachés a communication stating that further steps to separate peace negotiations would lead to the gravest consequences To this protest we answered the 11th of November by appealing to all the workers soldiers and peasants In this appeal we declared that under no circumstances will be permit our army to shed its blood under the club of the foreign bourgeoisie We swept aside the threat of the western imperialists and took upon ourselves the responsibility for our peace policy before the international working class First of all we published in accordance with our promises made as a matter of principle the secret treaties and declared that we would relinquish everything in these treaties that was against the interests of the masses of the people in all countries The capitalist governments made an attempt to make use of our disclosures against one another but the masses of the people understood and recognised us Not a single social patriotic publication as far as we know dared to protest against having all the methods of diplomacy radically changed by a government of peasants and workers They dared not protest against us for denouncing the dishonest cunning chicanery and cheating of the old diplomacy We made it the task of our diplomacy to enlighten the masses of the people to open their eyes to the real meaning of the policy of their governments in order to weld them together in a common struggle and a common hatred for the bourgeois capitalist order The German bourgeois press accused us of dragging on the peace negotiations but all nations anxiously followed the discussions at Brest-Litovsk and in this way we rendered during the two months and a half of peace negotiations a service to the cause of peace which was recognised even by the more honest of our enemies The question of peace was first put before the world in a shape which made it impossible to sidetrack it any longer by machinations behind the scenes On the 22nd of November a truce was signed to discontinue military activities on the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea Once more we requested our allies to join us and to conduct together with us the peace negotiations There was no reply Though this time the allies did not again attempt to frighten us by threats The peace negotiations were started December 9th, a month and a half after the peace decree was adopted The accusations of the purchased press and of the social trader press that we had made no attempt to agree with our allies on a common policy was therefore entirely false For a month and a half we kept our allies informed about every step we made and always called upon them to become party to the peace negotiations Our conscience is clear before the peoples of France, Italy and Great Britain We did all in our power to get all the belligerents to join the peace negotiations If we were compelled to start separate peace negotiations it was not because of any fault of ours but because of the western imperialists as well as those of the Russian parties which continued predicting the approaching destruction of the workmen's and peasants' government of Russia and who persuaded the allies not to pay serious attention to our peace initiative But be that as it may, on the 9th of December the peace conversations were started Our delegation made a statement of principles which set forth the basis of a general democratic peace in the exact expressions of the decree of the 26th of October The other side demanded that the session be broken off and the reopening of the sessions was later at the suggestion of Kurman repeatedly delayed It was clear that the delegation of the two-ton allies experienced no small difficulty in the formulation of its reply to our delegation On the 25th of December this reply was given The diplomats of the two-ton allies expressed agreement with our democratic formula of peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of peoples We saw clearly that this was but pretense but we had not expected even that they would try to pretend Because, as the French writer has said hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue The fact that the German imperialists found it necessary to make this tribute to the principles of democracy was, in our eyes, evidence that the situation of affairs within Germany was serious enough But if we, generally speaking, had no illusions concerning the love of democracy of Messes Kurman and Cernin we know well enough the nature of German and Austro-Hungarian dominating classes It must nevertheless be admitted that we had not the slightest idea of the chasm which separated the real intentions of German imperialism from those principles which were put forth on the 25th of December by Mr. von Kurman as a parody on the Russian Revolution A chasm which was revealed so strikingly a few days later such audacity we never expected Kurman's reply made a tremendous impression upon the working masses of Russia It was interpreted as the result of the fear felt by the dominant classes of the Central Empires because of the discontent and the growing impatience of the working masses of Germany On the 28th of December there took place in Petrograd a joint demonstration of workmen and soldiers for a democratic peace The next morning our delegation came back from Braslitovsk and brought those brigand demands which Kurman made to us in the name of the Central Empires as an interpretation of his democratic formulae At the first glance it may seem incomprehensible why the German diplomacy should have presented its diplomatic formulae if it intended within two or three days to disclose its wolfish appetite What was it that the German diplomacy expected to bring about? At least the theoretic discussions which developed around the democratic formulae owing largely to the initiative of Kurman himself were not without their danger that the diplomacy of the Central Empires should not reap many laurels in that way must have been clear beforehand to that diplomacy itself but the secret of the conduct of the diplomacy of Kurman consisted in that that gentleman was sincerely convinced of our readiness to play a four-handed game with him His way of reasoning was approximately as follows Russia needs peace The Bolshevik got the power because of their struggle for peace The Bolshevik desire to remain in power and this is possible for them only on condition that peace is concluded It is true that they bound themselves to a definite democratic program of peace but why did diplomats exist if not for the purpose of making black look white? We Germans will make it easier for the Bolshevik by covering our plunders by democratic formulas The Bolshevist diplomacy will have plenty of reason not to dig for the political essence of the matter or rather not to expose the entire world the contents of the enticing formulae In other words, Kurman relied upon a silent agreement with us He would return to us our fine formulas and we would give him a chance to get provinces and peoples for Germany without protest In the eyes of the German workers the annexations by force would thus receive the sanction of the Russian Revolution When, during the discussions we showed that with us it was not a matter of empty words or of camouflaging a conspiracy behind the scenes but a matter of democratic principles for the international life of the community of nations Kurman took it as a willful and malicious breaking of the silent agreement He would not by any means recede from the position taken in the formulas of the 25th of December Relying upon his cunning bureaucratic and judicial logic he tried in the face of the entire world to show that white is in no way different from black and it was our own perverseness which made us insist that there was such a difference Count Cernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary played a part in these negotiations which no one would consider inspiring or satisfactory He was awakened second and upon instructions from Kurman took it upon himself in all critical moments to utter the most extreme and cynical declarations General Hoffman brought a refreshing note into the negotiations showing no great sympathy for the diplomatic constructions of Kurman The general several times put his soldierly boot upon the table around which a complicated judicial debate was developing We, on our part, did not doubt for a single minute that just this boot of General Hoffman was the only element of serious reality in these negotiations The important trump in the hands of Mr. Kurman was the participation in the negotiations of a delegation of the Kiev Rada For the Ukrainian middle classes who had seized the power the most important factor seemed to be the recognition of their government by the capitalist governments of Europe as the Rada placed itself at the disposal of the Allied imperialists received from them some pocket money and immediately thereupon sent their representatives to Brest-Litovsk in order to make a bargain behind the backs of the Russian people with the government of Austria-Hungary for the recognition of the legitimate birth of their government They had hardly taken this first step on the road to international existence when the Kiev diplomacy revealed the same narrow-minded and the same moral standards which was always so characteristic of the Balkan Peninsula Mrs. Kurman and Cernin certainly had no illusions concerning the solidity of the new participant in the negotiations but they thought, and correctly so that the participation of the Kiev delegation complicated the game not without advantage for themselves At its first appearance at Brest-Litovsk the Kiev delegation characterised Ukraine as a component part of the Russian Federated Republic that was in the progress of formation This apparently embarrassed the diplomats of the Central Empires who considered at their main task to convert the Russian Republic into a new Balkan Peninsula At their second appearance the delegates of the Rada declared under dictation from the Austro-Hungarian diplomacy that Ukraine refused to join the Russian Federation and was becoming entirely independent Republic In order to give the reader an opportunity to get a better idea of the situation which was thus created for the Soviet power in the last moment of the peace negotiations I think it best to reproduce here its basic parts the address made by the author of these lines in his capacity as the People's Commissar on Foreign Affairs at the session of the Central Executive Committee on the 14th February 1918 End of Chapter 24 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rebecca Dittman, Liverpool United Kingdom Web address mercuriospirit.co.uk Comrades Upon Soviet Russia has fallen the task not only to construct a new but also to recapitulate the old to a certain degree or rather to a very large degree to pay all bills first of all bills of war which has lasted three and a half years The war put the economic power of the belligerent countries to a severe test The fate of Russia, a poor, backward country in a protracted war was predetermined In the terrible collision of the military machines the determining factor after all is said and done is the ability of the country to adapt its industries to the military needs to rebuild it on the shortest notice and to produce in continuously increasing quantities the weapons of destruction which are used up at such an enormous rate during this massacre of peoples Almost every country including the most backward could and did have powerful weapons of destruction at the beginning of the war that is it obtained them from foreign countries This is what all the backward countries did and so did Russia But the war speedily wears out its dead capital demanding that it be continuously replenished The military power of every single country drawn into the whirlpool of the world massacre was as a matter of fact measured by its ability to produce independently and during the war itself its cannons and shells and other weapons of destruction If the war had decided the problem of the balance of power in the very short time Russia might conceivably have turned out to be on that side of the trenches which victory favoured But the war dragged along for a long time and it was not an accident that it did so The fact alone that the international politics were for the last 50 years reduced to the construction of the so called European balance of power that is to a state in which the hostile powers approximately balance one another This fact alone was bound when the power and wealth of the present bourgeois nations is considered to make it a war of an extremely protracted character That meant first of all the exhaustion of the weaker and economically less developed countries The most powerful country in a military sense proved to be Germany because of the strength of the industries and because of their modern and rational construction as against the archaic construction of the German state France with its undeveloped state of capitalism proved to be far behind Germany and even such a powerful colonial power as Great Britain owing to the conservative and routine character of the English industries proved to be weaker than Germany When history put before the Russian Revolution the question of the peace negotiations we had no doubt that in these negotiations and so long as the decisive power of the revolutionary proletariat of the world had not interfered, we should be compelled to stand the bill of three and a half years of war There was no doubt in our minds that in the person of the German imperialism we were dealing with an opponent who was saturated with consciousness of his immense power which was strikingly revealed during the present war All the arguments made by bourgeois cliques that we might have been incomparably stronger if we had conducted these negotiations together with our allies are absolutely without foundation In order that we might at an indefinite future date conduct negotiations together with our allies we should first of all have had to continue the war together with them and if our country was weakened and exhausted the continuation of war a failure to bring it to a conclusion would have still further weakened and exhausted it We should have had to settle the war under conditions still more unfavorable to us In the case even that the combination of which Russia owing to international intrigues of Tsarism and the bourgeoisie had become a part the combination headed by Great Britain in the case even that this combination had come out of the war completely victorious let us for a moment admit the possibility of such as a not very probable issue even in that case comrades it does not mean that our country would also have come out victorious for during further continuation of this protracted war Russia would have become even more exhausted and plundered than now The masters of that combination in the hands of the fruits of the victory that is Great Britain and America would have displayed towards our country the same methods which were displayed by Germany during the peace negotiations it would be absurd and childish to appraise the politics of the imperialistic countries from the point of view of any considerations other than those considerations of naked interests and material power consequently if we as a nation are at present weakened before the imperialism of the world we are weakened not because of extricating ourselves from the fiery ring of the war having already previously extricated ourselves from the shackles of international military obligations no we are weakened by that very policy of the Tsarists and the bourgeois classes which we as a revolutionary party have always fought against before this war and during this war you remember comrades under what conditions our delegation went to Brest-Litovsk last time right after one of the sessions of the third or Russian congress of the soviets at that session we reported on the state of the negotiations and the demands of our opponents these demands as you remember were really no more than masked or rather half-masked annexationist aspirations at the expense of Lithuania Corland and part of Livonia the aisles of moonsound as well as half-masked demands for a punitive war indemnity which we then estimated would amount to 6, 8 or even 10 millions of rubles during interruption of the sessions which continued for about 10 days a considerable disturbance took place in Austria-Hungary strikes of masses of workers broke out and these strikes were the first recognition of our methods of conducting peace negotiations that we met with from the proletariat of the central empires as against the annexationist demand of the German militarism we promised here no miracles but we did say that the road we were pursuing was the only road remaining to the revolutionary democracy for securing the possibility of its further development there is room for complaint that the proletariat of the other countries and particularly of the central empires is too slow to enter the road to open revolutionary struggle yes it must be admitted that the pace of its development is all too slow but nevertheless there could be observed a movement in Austria-Hungary which swept the entire state and which was a direct echo of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations leaving from Brest-Litovsk our common opinion that there was no ground to believe that just this wave would sweep away the Austro-German militarism if we had been convinced that this could be expected we would gladly have given the promise that several persons demanded from us namely that under no circumstances would we sign a separate peace with Germany I said at that very time that we could not make such a promise for it would amount to taking upon ourselves the obligation of vanquishing the German militarism the secret of attaining such a victory was not in our possession and in as much as we would not undertake the obligation to change the balance of the world powers at a moment's notice we frankly and openly declared that revolutionary power may under certain conditions be compelled to agree to an annexationist peace a revolutionary power would fall short of its high principles only in the event that it should attempt to conceal from its own people the predatory character of the peace but by no means however in the event of the course of the struggle we could not make such a peace at the same time we indicated that we were leaving to continue negotiations under conditions which were seemingly improving for us and becoming worse for our enemies we observed the movement in Austria-Hungary and there were signs indicating that this was made the basis for statements by representatives of the German social democracy in the Reichstag that Germany was on the eve of similar events we went with this hope during the first days of this visit to Brest-Litovsk the wireless brought us the first news that in Berlin an enormous strike movement was developing this movement as well as that of Austria-Hungary was directly connected with the course of negotiations in Brest however as is often the case by reason of the dialectic of the class struggle just this conspicuous beginning of the proletarian rising which surpassed anything Germany had ever seen was bound to push the property classes to a closer consolidation and to greater hostility against the proletariat the German dominated classes are saturated with a sufficiently strong instinct of self-preservation to understand that concessions in such an exigency as they were in under the pressure of the masses of their own people concessions however small would amount to capitulation before the idea of the revolution that is why after the first moment of perplexity and panic the time when Curlman deliberately dragged out the negotiations by minor and formal questions had passed as soon as the strikes were disposed of as soon as he came to the conclusion that for the time being no imminent danger threatened his masters he again changed front and adopted a tone of unlimited self-confidence and aggression our negotiations were complicated by the participation of the Kiev Rada we caught attention to this last time too the delegation from the Kiev Rada appeared at a time when the Rada represented a fairly strong organisation in the Ukraine and when the way out of the war had not yet been predetermined just at that time we made the Rada offer to conclude a definite treaty with us making as one of the conditions of such a treaty the following demand that the Rada declare Kaladin and Kornylov to be counter-revolutionists and put no hindrance in the way of our waging war on these two leaders the delegation from the Kiev Rada arrived just when we hoped to reach an understanding with it on these matters we declared that as long as the people of the Ukraine recognised the Rada we considered its independent participation in these negotiations permissible but with the further development of events in Russian territory and in the Ukraine and the more antagonism between the Ukrainian masses and the Rada increased the greater became the Rada's readiness to conclude any kind of treaty with the governments of the central empires and if need be to drag German imperialism into the internal affairs of the Russian Republic in order to support the Rada against the Russian Revolution on the ninth day of February we learned that the peace negotiations carried on behind our backs between the Rada and the central powers had been signed the ninth of February happened to be the birthday of Leopold of Bavaria and as it is the custom in monarchial countries the triumphant historical act was timed with or without the consent of the Kiev Rada for this festive day General Hoffman had a salute fired in honour of Leopold of Bavaria having previously asked permission to do so of the Kiev delegation since by the Treaty of Peace Bresletovsk had been ceded to Ukraine events had taken such a turn however that at the time General Hoffman was asking permission for a military salute the Kiev Rada had but very little territory left outside of Bresletovsk on the strength of the telegrams we had received from Petrograd we officially made it known to the central powers delegation that the Kiev Rada no longer existed a circumstance which certainly had some bearing on the course of the peace negotiations we suggested to Count Sternin that his representatives accompany our officers into Ukrainian territory to ascertain whether the Kiev Rada existed or not Sternin seemed to welcome the suggestion but when we asked him if this meant that the treaty made with the Kiev delegation would not be signed before the return of his own mission he hesitated and promised to ask Kerlman about it having inquired he sent us an answer in the negative this was on February the 8th by the 9th they had signed the treaty this could not be delayed not only on account of Leopold's birthday but for the more important reason which Kerlman undoubtedly explained to Sternin if we should send our representatives into the Ukraine just now they might really convince themselves that the Rada does not exist and then we shall have to face a single all Russian delegation which would spoil our prospects in the negotiations by the Austro-Hungarian delegation we were advised to put principles aside and to place the question on a more practical plane then the German delegation would be disposed to concessions it was unthinkable that the Germans should decide to continue the war over say the moon islands if we put this demand into concrete form we replied that we were ready to look into such concessions as their German colleagues were prepared to make so far we have been contending for the self-determination of the Lithuanians, Poles Livonians, Letts, Estonians and other peoples and on all these questions you have told us that such self-determination is out of the question now let us see what your plans are in regard of the self-determination of another people, the Russians what designs and plans of a military strategic nature are behind your seizure of the moon islands for these islands as an integral part of an independent Estonian Republic or as a possession of the federated Russian Republic would have only a defensive military importance while in the hands of Germany they would assume offensive significance menacing the most vital centres of our country and especially Petrograd but of course Hoffman would make no concessions whatsoever then the hour for reaching a decision had come we could not declare war for we were too weak the army had lost all of its internal ties in order to save our country to overcome this disorganisation it was imperative to establish the internal coherence of the toilers this psychological tie can only be created by constructive work in factory, field and workshop we had to return the masses of labourers who had been subjected to great and intense suffering who had experienced catastrophes in the war to the fields and factories where they must find themselves again and get a footing in the labour world and rebuild internal discipline this was the only way to save the country which was now atoning for the sins of Tsarism and the bourgeoisie we had to get out of the war and withdraw the army from the slaughterhouse nevertheless we threw this in the face of the German militarism the piece you are forcing down our throats is a piece of aggression and robbery we cannot permit you messes diplomats to say to the German working men you have characterised our demands as aberritious, as annexationist but look, under these very demands we have brought you the signatures of the Russian revolution yes, we are weak, we cannot fight at present but we have sufficient revolutionary courage to say that we shall not willingly affix our signatures to the treaty which you are writing with a sword on the body of living peoples we refuse to affix our signatures I believe we acted properly comrades I do not mean to say, friends that a German advance upon Russia is out of the question it were too rash to make such an assertion in view of the great strength of the German imperialistic party, but I do believe that the stand we have taken in the matter has rendered it far more difficult for German militarism to advance upon us what would happen if it should advance to this there is but one thing to say if it is possible in our country a country completely exhausted and in a state of desperation to raise the spirits of the more revolutionary energetic elements if a struggle in defence of our revolution and the territory comprised within it is still possible, then this is the case only as a result of our abandoning the war and refusing to sign the peace treaty End of chapter 25 Recording by Rebecca Dittman Liverpool United Kingdom Web address MercurialSpirit.co.uk From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 26 The Second World War and the Signing of Peace During the first few days following the breaking off of negotiations the German government hesitated not knowing what course to pursue the politicians and diplomats evidently thought that the principal projects had been accomplished and that there was no reason for coveting our signatures the military men were ready in any event to break through the lines drawn by the German government at Brest-Litovsk Professor Krig, the advisor of the German delegation told a member of our delegation that a German invasion of Russia under the existing conditions was out of the question Count Murbach, then at the head of the German missions at Petrograd, went to Berlin with the assurance that an agreement concerning the exchange of prisoners of war had been satisfactorily reached All this did not in the least prevent General Hoffman from declaring on the fifth day after the Brest-Litovsk negotiations had been broken off that the armistice was over anti-dating the seven-day period from the time of the last Brest-Litovsk session It were really out of place to dilate here on the moral indignation caused by this piece of dishonesty It fits in perfectly with the general state of diplomatic military morality of the ruling classes The new German invasion developed under the circumstances most fatal for Russia Instead of the weeks notice agreed upon we received notice only two days in advance This circumstance intensified the panic in the army which was already in a state of chronic dissolution Resistance was almost unthinkable The soldiers could not believe that the Germans would advance after we had declared the state of war as an end The panicky retreat paralyzed the will even of such individual detachments as were ready to make a stand at Petrograd and Moscow The indignation against the treacherous and truly murderous German invasion reached a picture of greatest intensity In these alarming days and nights the workers were ready to enlist in the army by 10,000 but the matter of organising lagged far behind Isolated tenacious detachments full of enthusiasm became convinced themselves of their instability in their first serious clashes with German regulars This still further lowered the country's spirits The old army had long ago been hopelessly defeated and was going to pieces blocking all the roads and byways The new army owing to the country's general exhaustion the fearful disorganisation of industries and the means of transportation was being got together too slowly Distance was the only serious obstacle in the way of the German invasion The chief attention of the Austro-Hungarian government was centred on the Ukraine The Rada, through its delegation had appealed to the governments of the central empires for direct military aid against the Soviets which had by the time completely defeated the Ukrainians Thus did the petty bourgeois democracy of the Ukraine in its struggle against the working class and the destitute peasants voluntarily opened the gates to foreign invasion At the same time the spin-Hufford government was seeking the aid of German bayonets against the Finnish proletariat German militarism openly and before the whole world assumed the role of executioner of the peasant and proletarian revolution in Russia In the ranks of our party hot debates were being carried on as to whether or not we should, under these circumstances yield to the German ultimatum and sign a new treaty which, and this no one doubted would include conditions incomparably more onerous than those announced at Brest-Litovsk The representatives of the one view held that just now with the German intervention in the internal war of the Russian Republic it was impossible to establish peace for one part of Russia and remain passive, while in the south and in the north, German forces would be establishing a regime of bourgeois dictatorship Another view championed chiefly by Lenin was that every delay, even the briefest breathing spell, would greatly help the internal stabilisation and increase the Russian powers of resistance After the whole country and the whole world who've come to know of our absolute helplessness against foreign invasion at this time the conclusion of peace would everywhere be understood as an act forced upon us by the cruel law of disproportionate forces It would be childish to argue from the standpoint of abstract revolutionary ethics The point is not to die with honour but to achieve ultimate victory The Russian Revolution wants to survive must survive and must by every means at its disposal avoid fighting an uneven battle and gain time in the hope that the western revolutionary movement will come to its aid German imperialism is still engaged in a fierce annexationist struggle with English and American militarism Only because of this is the conclusion of peace between Russia and Germany till possible We must fully avail ourselves of this situation The welfare of the revolution is the highest law We should accept the peace which we are unable to reject We must secure a breathing spell to be utilised for intensive work within the country and especially for the creation of an army At the conference of the Communist Party as well as at the fourth conference of the Soviet the peace partisans triumphed They were joined by many of those who in January considered it impossible to sign the Brest-Litovsk Treaty Then, said they our signature would have been looked upon by the English and French working men as shameful capitulation within out an attempt to fight Even the base insinuations of the Anglo-French chauvinist to the secret compact between the Soviet government and the Germans might in the case that treaty had been signed find credence in certain circles of European labourers But after we had refused to sign the treaty after a new German invasion after our attempt to resist it and after our military weakness had become painfully obvious to the whole world after all this no one dared to reproach us for surrendering without a fight The Brest-Litovsk Treaty in its second enlarged edition was signed and ratified In the meantime, the executioners were doing their work in Finland and the Ukraine menacing more and more the most vital centres of great Russia Thus the question of Russia's very existence as an independent country is henceforth inseparably connected with the question of the European Revolution End of Chapter 26 From October to Brest-Litovsk by Leon Trotsky Chapter 27 Conclusion When our party took over the government we knew in advance what differences we had to contend with Economically the country had been exhausted by the war to the very utmost The revolution had destroyed the old administrative machinery and could not yet create anything to take its place Millions of workers had been rested from their normal nooks in the national economy of things declassified and physically shattered by the Three Years War The colossal war industries carried on on an inadequately prepared national foundation had drained all the lifeblood of the people and their demobilisation was attended with extreme difficulties The phenomena of economic and political anarchy spread throughout the country The Russian peasantry had for centuries been held together by barbarian national discipline from below and iron czarist rule from above had undermined the former The revolution destroyed the latter Psychologically the revolution meant the awakening of a sense of human personality amongst the peasantry The anarchic manifestations of this awakening are but the inevitable result of the preceding oppression A new order of things an order based on the workers own control of industry can come only through gradual and internal elimination of the anarchic manifestations of the revolution On the other hand the propered classes even though deprived of political power will not relinquish their advantage without a fight The revolution has brought to a head the question of private property in land and the tools of production that is the question of vital significance to the exploiting classes Politically this means ceaseless secret or open civil war In its turn civil war inevitably nourishes anarchical tendencies within the working men's movement With the disorganisation of industries of national finances of the transportation and provisioning systems along civil strife thus sets up tremendous difficulties in the way of constructive organising work Nevertheless the soviet government can look the future in the face with perfect confidence Only a careful inventory of all the country's resources only a rational organisation of industries the organisation born of one general plan only wise and careful distribution of all the products can save the country And this is socialism Either a complete descent to colonial status or socialist resurrection These are the alternatives before which our country finds itself The war has undermined the soil of the entire capitalistic world Herein lies our unconquerable strength The imperialistic ring that is pressing around us will lie burst asunder by the proletarian revolution We do not doubt this for a minute any more than we doubted during our decades of underground struggle the inevitableness of the downfall of czarism To struggle to fight our forces to establish industrial discipline and a socialist regime to increase the productivity of labour and to press on in the face of all obstacles This is our mission History is working in our favour The proletarian revolution will flare up sooner or later both in Europe and America and will bring emancipation not only of the Ukraine Poland, Lithuania, Kualand and Finland but also to all suffering humanity End of chapter 27 End of From October to Brest-Litovsk