Soviets, Parties & Unions

The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were fighting for the leadership of the working class, not to solve workers' problems. The workers themselves tended to pay little attention to the differences between the various left-wing groups and parties, differences which mattered a great deal to the socialists themselves. Rank-and-file Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had often united in the early days after the February Revolution anyway: as the moderate socialists discredited themselves, the Bolsheviks were able to win more support as the uncompromising party. February had given workers the freedom to combine, and they were able to force concessions from employers and government on the eight hour day, better working conditions, social insurance and so on. When, out of necessity, the move to self-management started, it was not only something alien to the workers' original demands, but also to every socialist organisation, and to the trade unions. By May there were some 2,000 unions with 1.5 million members; by October, two million members. Some of the unions existed in name only, with paper membership; others did nothing. The active trade unions wanted the factory committees to be local branches of the unions and little else.

For their part, the committees, which had been far quicker to organise and take up grievances, were in favour of co-operating with the unions, but certainly not of being subordinate to them.

The unions were dominated politically by the Mensheviks. For them, the revolution was a bourgeois-democratic one, ushering in a period of straightforward capitalism: thus the task was to establish trade unions as in Western Europe to organise and defend workers. They were for state control over the economy, in which there was to be no room for factory committees or workers' control. As the Menshevik Dalin put, it: "The factory committees must see only that production continues but they should not take production and the factories into their own hands (...) If the owner discards the enterprise, it must pass not into the hands of the workers but to the jurisdiction of the city or central government." [13] Either the capitalists or the bourgeois state were to run industry, never the workers.

A directly contrary view was taken by the anarcho-syndicalists, for whom the factory committees were the beginnings of the future socialist society. Maksimov and the 'Golos Truda' group called for "total workers' control" over the process of production itself. Their critical attitude towards the unions and solid support for the committees gave the anarcho-syndicalists some influence on workers, particularly in Vyborg and Kronstadt. However their antipathy to centralisation left them vague about how the factory committees should link up across the country.

The Bolsheviks occupied what appeared to be an ambiguous position, shifting their emphasis from the committees to the unions, from workers' control to state control. This was partly a reflection of the differences between the party leadership, which (apart from Lenin) was unsure as to what it wanted at first, and the rank-and-file members, who, many of them being workers, were active in the factory committees. Lenin's April Theses set the tone for his line of thought: "Not the 'introduction' of socialism as our immediate task, but immediate transition merely to control by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies over the social production and distribution of products." In 'Pravda' on June 4th Lenin was to repeat that workers' control would be carried out by the soviets: the factory committees didn't rate a mention. For Lenin, workers' control was a form of accountancy, and socialism merely state control of production. Many militants in the party thought a decisive transformation of society was at stake. Navimov, a Bolshevik worker on the Central Council of Factory Committees, said at the first conference of Petrograd factory committees; "Control must be created from below and not from above, created democratically and not bureaucratically, and I call upon you to take this mission upon yourselves. Only we workers can achieve what is necessary for our future existence." [14]

The Bolsheviks had helped set up the Central Council of Factory Committees, but were using the committees in the struggle to win control of the trade unions from the Mensheviks. At the All-Russian Trade Union Conference in June, Milyutin, the Bolshevik representative, said that the committees should be union cells, and workers' control would be exercised by the unions and the soviets. It has to be said that before February no Bolshevik had given any thought to workers' control and the problems attached to it: however their basic political assumptions were already starting to drive them against the real workers' movement. As the committees themselves were not always united, and were unclear over their relationships with other institutions and workers' organisations, the conflict did not assume a concrete form until after October.

In 1905, the Soviet of Workers' Deputies had risen out of a general strike. In 1917 this creation was resurrected, but with a difference: socialists set up a Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet both independently of and in advance of the workers. A leadership established itself that had no workers in it. These first Soviet leaders were moderate socialists, who hoped in fact to phase out the soviets as the apparatus of a bourgeois-democratic republic was created. Some minor soviet elections occurred as early as February 24th; city-wide elections were held on the 28th in Petrograd, the day after the Provisional Executive Committee was formed. These elections allowed for one deputy per thousand voters, or one per small factory, with one per company of soldiers (usually 250 men). Thus the large factories containing some 87% of workers had 424 delegates, the small factories with the remaining 13% had 422, and the soldiers had some 2,000, by mid-March. Not only did the soldiers have an excessive influence in the Soviet, but also the workers' delegates were frequently not workers, but middle class radicals of one sort or another.

The Petrograd Provisional Executive Committee started with 42 members: this initially included seven workers and eight soldiers who were all soon ousted. The Bolshevik Shlyapnikov had successfully proposed that each socialist party should have two seats automatically on the Executive. In the event, all parties, large trade unions and co-operatives were allowed to send two delegates. Thus Stalin and Kamenev of the Bolsheviks, both well-known Petrograd workers, got onto the committee unelected. At the first Congress of Soviets there were 57 executive officers, including just four workers, one sailor and one soldier. No soldier or worker spoke throughout the whole proceedings: all speeches were made by party members, not one of them working class.

The dominating role of the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, another moderate socialist party, was reflected in the way that the Petrograd Soviet urged a return to work in March before the Provisional Government conceded the eight hour day, or made any move towards peace and a settlement of the land question. It was mass action and the threat of a general strike that had gained workers the shorter working day. The Soviet similarly tried to limit workers' control by setting up 'Labour Mediation Boards' to settle disputes. It tried to restrain anti-war demonstrations. The moderate socialists were after all looking to the bourgeoisie to institute a western-style capitalism, not to the workers to create socialism. Despite that, the Provisional Executive Committee found itself under intense pressure from the workers. It was forced to take over the State Bank, the Treasury, Mint and Printing Office; post and telegraph offices, railway stations and other printing works were also seized. As early as March 6th, meetings of militant workers were demanding that the Soviet take power. However these early demands for "all power to the soviets'' were opposed by many workers, most soldiers and overwhelmingly by the socialist leaders of the Soviet itself. The Bolsheviks at this stage supported the idea of the Soviet supporting the Provisional Government.

By June there were 519 soviets, 28 of which were working class alone, 101 were workers' and soldiers', 305 were workers', soldiers' and peasants', the rest being all-class. The majority of these soviets were run by non-working class party activists. Once party militants got into these higher soviets, they controlled the other posts. For instance, Anisimov, the chairman of the soviet of district committees was not elected to any district committee at all -- he had been selected by his Menshevik colleagues. In the view of these socialists, clearly some were destined to rule, others to be ruled. The Bolsheviks too were happy to build up majorities for themselves by similar methods. For workers though these city soviets tended to be too slow to help tackle their pressing problems. The local soviets and factory committees acted on their own account without approval from above to get things done. Sometimes they merged at this local district level. Here workers were able to conduct affairs, leaving the intellectuals to speech-making in the city soviets. The local soviets took on economic, political and social problems: food, housing, justice and culture all came within their orbit. They guarded their local autonomy, but were prepared to unite -- from below -- and an interdistrict conference was held in Petrograd. This brought them into conflict with the executive committee of the city Soviet. Similarly in Moscow, the local soviets were much more radical than the Menshevik-run city Soviet.

Notes

[13] quoted in Sirianni, p50.

[14] quoted in Sirianni, P55 (from The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees, Paul Avrich, pp 69-70).