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Vol. 79/No. 35 October 5, 2015
(Books of the Month column)
1917 Russian Revolution opened
road forward for toilers
The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky, one of
Pathfinder’s Books of the Month in September, is an account of the
world’s first socialist revolution by one of its central leaders. The
excerpt below from the chapter “Shifts in the Masses” describes changes
in the consciousness of the working class in Russia after the overthrow
of the czar in February 1917. This first revolution brought to power
what Trotsky calls the Compromise parties, including the Mensheviks and
Social Revolutionaries, who turned power over to the liberal
bourgeoisie. Under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, the Bolsheviks charted
a course that led the working class to power in October of the same
year. Reprinted by permission of Pathfinder Press.
BY LEON TROTSKY
The proletariat was the chief motive force of the revolution. At the
same time the revolution was giving shape to the proletariat. And the
proletariat was badly in need of this.
We have observed the decisive rôle of the Petrograd workers in the
February days. The most militant positions were occupied by the
Bolsheviks. Immediately after the overturn, however, the Bolsheviks
retired into the background. The Compromise parties advanced to the
front of the political stage. They turned over the power to the liberal
bourgeoisie. Patriotism was the countersign of this bloc. Its assault
was so strong that at least one half of the leaders of the Bolshevik
Party capitulated to it. With Lenin’s arrival the course of the party
changed abruptly, and thereafter its influence grew swiftly. …
A revolution teaches and teaches fast. In that lies its strength. Every
week brings something new to the masses. Every two months creates an
epoch. At the end of February, the insurrection. At the end of April, a
demonstration of the armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd. At the
beginning of July, a new assault, far broader in scope and under more
resolute slogans. At the end of August, [Gen.] Kornilov’s attempt at an
overthrow beaten off by the masses. At the end of October, conquest of
power by the Bolsheviks. Under these events, so striking in their
rhythm, molecular processes were taking place, welding the heterogeneous
parts of the working class into one political whole. In this again the
chief rôle was played by the strike.
Frightened by the lightning of revolution striking in the midst of their
bacchanalia of war profits, the industrialists made concessions in the
first weeks to the workers. The Petrograd factory owners even agreed,
with qualifications and exceptions, to the eight-hour day. But that did
not quiet things, since the standard of living continually sank. …
The mood in the workers’ districts was becoming more and more nervous
and tense. What depressed them most of all was the absence of prospects.
The masses are capable of enduring the heaviest deprivations when they
understand what for, but the new régime was more and more revealing
itself to them as a mere camouflage of the old relations against which
they had revolted in February. This they would not endure.
The strikes were especially stormy among the more backward and exploited
groups of workers. Laundry workers, dyers, coopers, trade and industrial
clerks, structural workers, bronze workers, unskilled workers,
shoemakers, paper-box makers, sausage makers, furniture workers, were
striking, layer after layer, throughout the month of June. The
metalworkers were beginning, on the contrary, to play a restraining
rôle. To the advanced workers it was becoming more and more clear that
individual economic strikes in the conditions of war, breakdown and
inflation could not bring a serious improvement, that there must be some
change in the very foundations. The lockout not only made the workers
favorable to the demand for the control of industry, but even pushed
them toward the thought of the necessity of taking the factories into
the hands of the state. …
The growth of strikes, and of the class struggle in general, almost
automatically raised the influence of the Bolsheviks. In all cases where
it was a question of life-interests the workers became convinced that
the Bolsheviks had no ulterior motives, that they were concealing
nothing, and that you could rely on them. In the hours of conflict all
the workers tended toward the Bolsheviks, the non-party workers, the
Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks.
This is explained by the fact that the factory and shop committees,
waging a struggle for the life of their factories against the sabotage
of the administration and the proprietors, went over to the Bolsheviks
much sooner than the Soviet. At a conference of the factory and shop
committees of Petrograd and its environs at the beginning of June, the
Bolshevik resolution won 335 out of 421 votes. This fact went by utterly
unnoticed in the big newspapers. Nevertheless it meant that in the
fundamental questions of economic life the Petrograd proletariat, not
yet having broken with the Compromisers, had nevertheless as a fact gone
over to the Bolsheviks.
At the June conference of trade unions it became known that in Petrograd
there were over 50 unions with no less than 250,000 members. The metal
workers’ union numbered about 100,000 workers; its membership had
doubled in the course of the one month of May. The influence of the
Bolsheviks in the union had grown still more swiftly.
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