Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West (10 page)

The problem for Rhys Williams as an advocate was his poor Russian. Lenin himself, as Rhys Williams recalled in his memoirs, was
aware of this: ‘ “Ah!” he said with sudden animation . . . “and how goes the Russian language? Can you understand all these speeches now?” “There are so many words in Russian,” I replied evasively. “That’s it,” he retorted: “You must go at it systematically. You must break the backbone of the language at the outset. I’ll tell you my method of going at it.”’
³⁴
Williams thought he was about to be let into an extraordinary secret. But Lenin simply counselled him to learn – in sequential order – all the nouns, all the verbs, all the adverbs and adjectives, then the grammar and the rules of syntax. He adjured him to practise ‘everywhere and upon everybody’.
³⁵
The worst thing of all, he said, was to go on talking only to Americans. Lenin advised him to put an advertisement in the newspaper for exchange lessons with a native speaker of Russian. He expected immediate improvement: ‘Next time I see you I’ll give you an examination.’
³⁶
Rhys Williams was dispirited by this kind of guidance. He felt he had been listening to Lenin’s ‘system of the conquest of the bourgeoisie applied to the conquest of a language, a merciless application to the job’.
³⁷

Within a few years the foreign anti-war writers in Russia would acquire the name of ‘fellow-travellers’. They were not yet Bolsheviks – and most of them never became one. None had studied Lenin’s doctrines with any closeness. They had not read Marx. But they increasingly sympathized to a greater or lesser extent with Lenin, Trotsky and their practical purposes. They strongly disapproved of what the Allied governments were doing with Russia. They were caught up in the revolutionary swirl. The old romance of exotic Russia entered their minds and gave their lives a new meaning. They wanted to be the people who explained the complexities and traumas of Russian affairs to readers who barely knew where the country was. In their euphoria they intended to pass on their impressions in whatever way was available. They did not yet know that this would lead them down the road of raising the cheers for a bloody revolution- ary dictatorship.

5. REVOLUTION AND THE WORLD

Lenin had obtained sanction for insurrection from the Bolshevik Central Committee at its October meetings but he could not stop worrying. Lodged in a safe apartment on Petrograd’s outskirts, he wrote frantic notes to leading comrades. His suspicion was that they were losing their nerve. If the chance to get rid of Kerenski were to be lost, he believed, there might not be another one soon. With the Ministry of Internal Affairs still searching for him as a German agent, he nonetheless decided to run the risk of taking a tram to the Smolny Institute, where the Petrograd Soviet as well as all the main socialist parties were based, intending to cajole the Bolshevik leadership into an immediate insurrection. Lenin’s only precaution against being recognized was to wrap a bandage round his face. His wild urge to make revolution rubbed out any fear of arrest, and he made for the city centre in an angry mood.

He underestimated quite how much had been done by the night of 6–7 November 1917. Left undisturbed, Trotsky had worked on his plan to ensure that the insurrection coincided with the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets. Kamenev and Zinoviev, whom Lenin had branded as strike-breakers for their exposure of the Central Committee’s decisions, returned to help the leadership. As delegates arrived from the provinces, it was clear that the Bolsheviks by themselves would fail to obtain an absolute majority at the Congress. But they would definitely have the largest delegation and could count on approval from many other delegates. Trotsky acted with panache through the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet; he did everything but announce the times, date and places of the planned action. Kerenski saw what was coming and gave orders to close the bridges over the River Neva and to suppress the Bolshevik newspapers in the capital. This allowed Trotsky to depict his own actions as being of a defensive nature. In the Smolny Institute, where the Congress was scheduled to take place, sat the Menshevik and
Socialist-Revolutionary leaders. Too late they were at last considering how they might replace Kerenski. Unlike Trotsky, they had no idea how to accomplish this. The morning of 7 November was full of action. The insurgents seized strategic points around the city on orders from the Military-Revolutionary Committee. Railway stations and the telegraph offices were occupied. Garrisons were placed under supervision.

The Petrograd Soviet met in emergency session that afternoon in the Smolny Institute. Trotsky led for the Bolsheviks by announcing the downfall of the Provisional Government. He then introduced Lenin, who until that point had kept out of sight on the Bolshevik corridor. Lenin, recognizable even though he had shaved off his beard, received a huge ovation and spoke as if the insurrection was complete. Fighting was in fact continuing, but Kerenski was a spent force. When the Congress of Soviets opened in the evening, it was obvious that the other parties could put up no obstacles to the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks accrued support from the floor, including from many Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. After yet another defiant statement by Trotsky, Martov got up to demand negotiations among all the socialist parties. The Congress fell into uproar as Bolshevik responsibility for the street violence was criticized. The Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders walked out, taking scores of their followers with them. Only the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries stayed in their places, but even they refused to join the Bolsheviks in a coalition.

This did not fluster Lenin or Trotsky. Instead they focused on spreading the news that the Provisional Government had been overthrown and that the Council of People’s Commissars – Sovnarkom – had taken power. The Bolshevik leadership had a quick, informal discussion about who should fill the posts. Lenin was to be Sovnarkom’s Chairman. He was the party’s veteran leader and nobody contemplated having anyone else in the supreme office. But Lenin, appreciating Trotsky’s talent and seeing the need to appear gracious, made the gesture of offering the post to him. Lenin must have been relieved when Trotsky refused; and indeed the only problem was that Trotsky at first expressed to reluctance to take over any big political job. He took some persuading before agreeing to become People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs. He and Lenin worked closely in tandem. Sovnarkom rapidly issued revolutionary decrees that signalled
the new direction of policy being taken after Kerenski’s removal.

The Decree on Land transferred the cultivation of estates owned by monarchy, gentry and Church to the peasantry. The Decree on Press sanctioned the closure of anti-Sovnarkom newspapers. The Decree on Peace called for an end to the Great War. Lenin claimed that ‘the peoples’ of the belligerent powers had a direct interest in this objective. In making an appeal in Sovnarkom’s name, he avoided Marxist jargon. If he wanted to achieve his ends, he needed to win over organizations and groups which as yet had no affiliation with Marxism. Lenin was no close student of Allied diplomacy, but he sensed that the Americans might be more responsive than the French or British to his decree. Consequently he used language reflecting some of President Wilson’s public statements on the kind of peace that was desirable. As Soviet Chairman he aimed to convince opinion in the US that Russia under communist leadership wished the nations of Europe to secure their freedom. He was hoping to edge President Wilson away from his Allied colleagues in Paris and London. He also wanted workers and soldiers to feel that the Soviet government recognized peace as the imperative priority. Most of them were not Marxists. Communist discourse had to take their ways of thinking into account.
¹

Sovnarkom’s future was uncertain for several days as negotiations began among the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin and Trotsky had never described their preferences with precision, which proved to have been brilliantly devious. Workers and soldiers voting Bolshevik in soviet elections had assumed that this would lead to the formation of a socialist government coalition. Most Bolsheviks felt the same, and it was a basic requirement of several Bolshevik Central Committee members who had taken Lenin’s side at the October meetings.
²

Kamenev was eager to bring such a coalition to birth. The Central Committee deputed him to conduct discussions with the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders – and Lenin and Trotsky were impotent to prevent this. The Menshevik-led Railwaymen’s Union went on strike to destroy any chance of the Bolsheviks ruling alone. Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders felt strong enough to stipulate that they would join a coalition only on condition that it excluded Lenin and Trotsky. Politics were caught in a storm as
Kerenski unexpectedly returned to the outskirts of Petrograd with a Cossack cavalry unit. Garrison troops and the Red Guard were sent out to confront them. A brief conflict followed before the Cossacks were routed and Kerenski fled. This steeled Lenin and his supporters in the Central Committee in standing firm against the demands being made upon them. Their confidence grew when the strike on the railways faded away. The Central Committee resolved to drop the talks with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries; and although overtures continued to be made to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks were willing to rule by themselves in the interim. Even Kamenev and his sympathizers became willing to cast their lots in with a strategy that excluded those socialists who had co-operated with the Provisional Government.

The Bolsheviks were desperate to spread the news around Russia. The party published newspapers in all the main cities and its local committees could issue proclamations and put up posters. Sovnarkom’s occupation of the telegraph offices enabled it to relay the exact text of decrees.

In city after city in Russia there was a declaration of the transfer of power to the soviets. Workers took control of factories and mines. Peasants were stimulated by the Decree on Land to occupy the landed estates. Sovnarkom and the Bolshevik Central Committee sent out messages explaining that it was up to the ‘localities’ to make their own revolutions. Non-Russians, who made up half the population of the old empire, were promised national self-determination. Central power remained weak and patchy, and experienced personnel were needed too badly in Petrograd and Moscow for many militants to be spared for work in the provinces. Lenin and his leading comrades felt that history was on their side. The Bolsheviks hoped that their revolution would proceed as much from below as from on high. Difficulties were unavoidable. The parties to the right of the Bolsheviks were not reconciled to being deposited in the wastepaper basket of politics. The middle and upper classes detested the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Orthodox Church was appalled by it. Kerenski’s armed sally would not be the last attempt at counter-revolution. But Lenin and Trotsky trusted that events would validate their strategy. Russia would undergo a socialist transformation and seizures of power by far-left socialists would soon follow all over Europe. A whole new epoch was in the making.

Neither the Allies nor the Central Powers had any interest in
helping a regime that was calling for their downfall and an immediate end to the war. Few foreign newspapers greeted the rise of Bolshevism with enthusiasm. What is more, Sovnarkom had no diplomatic service and the Provisional Government’s ambassadors lobbied Allied governments to refuse recognition to the Bolsheviks.

The Western cheerleaders in Petrograd came into their own at this juncture. As John Reed, Louise Bryant, Bessie Beatty and Albert Rhys Williams roamed around the city, they understood that events of historic importance were taking place. They had the luck to be on the spot. Within minutes of the fall of the Winter Palace they had entered the building to inspect the scene.
³
The Bolsheviks welcomed assistance from the little American group in propagating the news in a positive spirit to foreign countries. Reed and his friends were given passes to enter virtually any public building they wanted.
⁴
They were given privileged use of the international telegraph system, and on 15 November the Military-Revolutionary Committee allowed Reed to send the very first international cable from Petrograd – he could also travel free on the railway network.
⁵
The Americans avidly wrote dispatches telling the story as they saw it. They tried to dispel the impression given in most of the Western press that the Bolsheviks were insincere, bloodthirsty or incompetent. They reported on the ease with which power had been seized. They recapitulated the decrees and endorsed objectives of peace, bread and land. They were acting as Sovnarkom’s window on the world.

Trotsky entranced them, especially Bryant and Beatty. He was an elegant man who was punctilious in his manners and fastidious about his appearance. For years he had denounced Lenin for his divisive tendencies; he was known for his efforts to bring the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks back together before the Great War. In the revolutionary crisis of 1905 he had shown his exceptional qualities. No one spoke more vividly, and he had no need for anything more than a short set of notes before he occupied the platform. Trotsky was a master of Russian prose. He had gone to the Balkan war in 1912–13 as a special correspondent for a Kiev newspaper. His autobiographical fragments sold well. But in writing them he exposed his vanity. Despite his efforts to bring the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks back together in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party before the Great War, many critics suspected him of being just as egocentric as Lenin. But what surprised everybody in 1917 was how literally he believed in the need for a ruthless proletarian dictatorship. Plenty of Russian Marxists had talked
about revolutionary violence without genuinely meaning it. Trotsky meant it – and he found a like-minded comrade in Lenin.