The Soviet Union 1917-1991

Martin Mccauley

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317901785
• Auflage: 2
• Thema: History
• Thema: Russian History

A second edition of this famous survey has been eagerly awaited. When the first edition appeared Brezhnev was still in power, Gorbachev did not make it to the index, and the USSR was a superpower. Today the Soviet experiment is over and the USSR no longer exists. How? Why? Martin McCauley has reworked and greatly expanded his book to answer these questions, and to provide a complete account of the Soviet years. Essential reading to an appreciation of recent history -- and to a better understanding of whatever happens next.

CHAPTER ONE

Revolution

‘DAYS OF HOPE AND DAYS OF DESPAIR’

THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION

The pomp and circumstance which attended the tercentenary celebrations of the Romanov dynasty in 1913 matched the occasion. The Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Tsarina, Aleksandra, glowed with pride. But pride comes before a fall. And the fall, in February 1917, was sudden, unexpected and complete. The autocrat of all the Russias passed from the scene without so much as a whisper of protest. How was this possible?

The First World War imposed intolerable strains on the State. Russia had been undergoing a process of modernisation before 1914 and the war quickened the pace but the demands were too great. By the end of 1916 public confidence in the government had evaporated, the army had been defeated and transport problems were mounting. About 80,000 metal and textile workers went on strike on 23 February. It also happened to be International Women's Day. It had not been organised by any political party, it was the spontaneous expression of increasing exasperation at the privations and shortages, exacerbated by war. There were 160,000 troops garrisoned in the capital, Petrograd. The regime did not appear to be in danger. The strike gradually spread throughout the city, bringing vast numbers of people on to the streets. On 26 February the troops fired on the demonstrators and drew blood but by the following day the mood of the army was different. The Volhynian regiment went over to the people and set out to convince others to do the same. Other regiments followed. The Cossacks, formally the most reliable of the Imperial guards, changed sides and this doomed the dynasty. The revolution had almost been bloodless; only 587 civilians, 655 soldiers and 73 policemen sealed its victory with their blood.

The leaderless crowds turned to the only authority they knew, the parliament or Duma. It had been dissolved by the Tsar but a thirteen-man Temporary Committee composed of members of all political groupings except the right, and essentially middle class, was set up on 27 February. Also established the same day and in the same building, the Tauride Palace, was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies (when representatives arrived from the garrisons it became known as the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies). A descendant of the Soviet of 1905, it was brought into being largely on Menshevik initiative. The Temporary Committee wanted to preserve the monarchy, fearing anarchy if the symbol of authority passed from the scene. However, the Tsar could not be saved and he abdicated almost with a sigh of relief. He abdicated first in favour of his haemophiliac son, Aleksei, on 2 March 1917 but then changed his mind when he discovered he would have to part from the boy if the latter became Tsar. He then abdicated a second time, later the same day, in favour of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich. The latter refused the proffered crown, wisely indicating that he would only accept it if the Constituent Assembly placed it on his head. Russia had become a de facto republic. This was what the crowds wanted, a constitutional monarchy held little attraction for them. Already the Temporary Committee was out of step with the aspirations of the people. After all, the masses had made the revolution and not the middle classes. In the months after February they accepted that the bourgeoisie should hold the reins of government since they had no leaders of their own and the Petrograd Soviet had no desire to rule. It was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and the Mensheviks — the moderate socialists — and they reasoned that since the revolution was at its bourgeois stage the representatives of the bourgeoisie should form the administration. The Soviet would support the new government (or the Provisional Government as it became known when it took office on 2 March) against reaction but it would oppose it if it went against the goals of the February Revolution. The government was provisional or temporary until the Constituent Assembly, the first democratically elected parliament, convened. A government of national unity was never contemplated.

The first Prime Minister was Prince G. E. Lvov, a liberal but not a member of any party. The liberals, the Constitutional Democrats or Kadets, dominated the ten-man administration. There was only one surprise among the ministers, the Minister of Justice was A. F. Kerensky, an SR and a member of the Petrograd Soviet. The latter had officially voted not to participate in the new government but Kerensky's verbal wizardry, on a par with that of his contemporary David Lloyd George, won him the right to accept a portfolio.

The government immediately enacted much progressive legislation. An amnesty was declared for all political prisoners, capital punishment was abolished, the right to strike and organise was granted and all legal restrictions based on class, nationality and religion were lifted. Lenin even went so far as to state that Russia was the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world. The Kadets were in no hurry to convene the Constituent Assembly since they did not want to encourage peasant and worker radicalism. They wanted agrarian reform left until the new parliament was convened and urged workers' organisations to exercise self-restraint in wage bargaining. The Kadets were ever mindful of the damage industrial and rural unrest could do to Russia's war effort. But it takes two to make a bargain. Workers and soldiers looked to the Petrograd Soviet and the myriad of other soviets to put their aspirations into practice. Soon peasants' soviets spread throughout the countryside. Dual power was a reality from the inception of the Provisional Government. Unfortunately for the government, its writ did not carry far beyond the capital. The government dismissed the tsarist governors and appointed its own commissars, but they did not last long. The police force disintegrated with the February Revolution, and law and order became the responsibility of local organisations. Free elections led to those parties based on the middle classes, such as the Kadets, losing out. The government was, understandably, reluctant to grant much autonomy to local bodies. This became more of a problem in non-Russian areas, such as the Ukraine and Finland. The Russian Orthodox Church could not be relied upon as an ally of a liberal-minded government.

War or peace proved an insoluble dilemma. Army and naval officers, on the whole, accepted the revolution, but their ability to command changed. The most unpopular were sometimes lynched. The Petrograd Soviet pushed through Order no. 1, which ended blind obedience to superiors. Soldiers did not need to salute when off duty, demanded to be addressed in the polite second person plural and the right to elect their own committees to articulate and defend their interests. The government gave in with a certain feeling of unease. Soldiers in city garrisons began to set the tone and the message which came across was a strong desire for the war to be considered defensive. Only shoot if you are attacked. In the meanwhile every effort should be undertaken to negotiate a general European peace. This severely constrained the government's room for manoeuvre. Workers and peasants also overwhelmingly favoured an end to hostilities.

But how was this to be achieved? The Soviet wanted international socialist action to secure a just peace without annexations and indemnities. Correspondingly the Soviet issued an appeal to the ‘comrade proletarians and toilers of all countries’;.¹ The government, on the other hand, believed that one of the reasons for the Revolution had been the inefficient manner in which the Imperial regime had prosecuted the war. Prince Lvov and his government felt that Russia had to hold to its international obligations, one of which was not to conclude a unilateral peace. To keep Russia buoyed up, the Allies had promised it the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, something the Russians had been eyeing enviously for a millennium. The gulf between the two heirs to Imperial power widened until street demonstrations, organised by the Soviet, brought down the government. The flashpoint was a note which the Foreign Minister, Paul Milyukov (Kadet), had sent to the Allied Powers dated 18 April (1 May New Style). In it he expressed the hope that means would be found to ‘obtain those guarantees and sanctions which were indispensable for the prevention of sanguinary conflicts in the future’.² This was like a red rag to a bull. To the Soviet ‘guarantees and sanctions’ meant imperialistic aggrandisement. The demonstrations made crystal clear who the real master of Russia was: it was the Soviet. By bringing down the government the Soviet placed itself in a quandary. The Kadet party had been chastened by the experience and plainly could not command much respect throughout the country. If reaction were not to rear its head again the Soviet would have to drop its objection to accepting governmental responsibility. The result was the first Coalition Government of 5 May 1917. Lvov stayed as Prime Minister. Kerensky became Minister of War, Viktor Chernov, the SR leader, Minister of Agriculture and two Mensheviks were included, M. I. Skobelev accepting the sensitive post of Minister of Labour.

The Kadets had the advantage in that the Mensheviks and SRs were reluctant bed partners. They hoped they would restrain the Petrograd Soviet, temper wage demands and hold back land seizures. Minority socialist ministers advocated their own policies — immediate peace, higher wages, better working conditions and more governmental intervention in the economy — but little came of them. The socialists did not leave in a huff since they were ever mindful of the threat from the right. Kadets were, after all, much preferable to a military government. This may explain why socialist ministers acceded to the government's desire to begin an offensive in late June. The Allies, launching an attack on the Western Front, had requested Russian help on the Eastern Front. The result was predictable, absolute disaster. Not only the bourgeois parties but also the moderate socialist leadership of the Soviet were now discredited. This opened the floodgates to those who had more radical ideas about ending the war, first and foremost the Bolsheviks. They, ably led by Lenin who had returned to Petrograd on 3 April from Switzerland, wanted a Soviet government, the transformation of the ‘imperialist’ war into a civil war and the passage of the revolution from its first bourgeois stage to its second stage, the transfer of power to the proletariat and the poor strata of the peasantry. Their slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ had instant appeal and they also championed a second explosive theme, all land to the peasants. This was SR policy and Viktor Chernov was Minister of Agriculture at the time but he could not win the government over to legalising the ever increasing land seizures before the Constituent Assembly met. The peace and land questions were intimately linked. Who were the soldiers but peasants in uniform? So the Bolshevik press, published in vast quantities and often distributed free, urged the soldiers to desert, thus robbing the Provisional Government of any armed support, and return to their villages and seize the land, thus removing one of the pillars of government support, the landlords. Lenin declared war on the Provisional Government in his April Theses, proclaimed on 4 April.

The Bolsheviks revelled in the industrial strife, rural conflict and discomfiture of the ‘bourgeois’ government. They were the only party who had a ready-made solution to all of society's ills, revolution. Workers tended to blame the bosses for the economic difficulties but many of these resulted from lack of inputs. Monthly coal output declined by 27 per cent between January and August 1917, and from April enterprises were receiving less than 40 per cent of the metals they needed.³ This was partly due to transport difficulties. As revenue declined the government resorted to the printing press and inflation soared. Workers developed a greater sense of solidarity as poverty beckoned. Factory committees could take over an enterprise if they feared closure. There were also trade-union committees and often political parties had cells in factories. Most activity was defensive and one result was workers' control. This concept had many meanings but amounted in most cases to shadowing management closely.

Huge demonstrations against the June offensive, spearheaded by 20,000 very radical Kronstadt sailors, on 3–4 July, known as the July Days, came very near to transferring power to the most radical champion of the Soviet, the Bolsheviks. The government saved itself by playing a trump card. It accused Lenin of being a German agent and the Bolsheviks of accepting vast sums of money from Imperial Germany. Lenin and others had crossed Germany in a sealed train on their way home and they had accepted certain conditions. The mood of the crowd changed dramatically. Pravda, the Bolsheviks' newspaper, had its printing presses smashed, prominent Bolsheviks such as Trotsky were imprisoned and Lenin fled to Finland disguised as a train driver's mate. Clean shaven and wearing a blond wig he looked for all the world like a Finn. There is little doubt that the Bolsheviks did receive large sums from Berlin but they used them to pursue their main goal, revolution. Imperial Germany believed that this goal was also in its interests, a catastrophic misjudgment.

All was set fair for the second Coalition Government which took office on 24 July with Kerensky as Prime Minister. Military matters again brought it down. Kerensky reached an agreement with General Lavr Kornilov, the new C-in-C. General Krymov was to occupy and disarm the capital and dissolve the Petrograd Soviet, apparently because Bolshevik demonstrations were expected on 27 August, the half anniversary of the February Revolution.⁴ When Kornilov began to move his forces on 27 August, Kerensky changed his mind and ordered him to surrender his post. Kornilov accused Kerensky of betraying Russia but could not get to Petrograd because the railwaymen would not let him through.

The Kornilov episode was the turning-point. Kerensky had to appeal to the Petrograd Soviet for help but in the event it was not needed. However, the Soviet had acquired arms to defend the capital and these weapons were not handed back. It was now possible, after the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet, chaired by Lev Trotsky, had been set up to provide the Soviet with advice on military matters, for the Bolsheviks to contemplate armed insurrection. Popular exasperation at the government's ineffective showing and disillusionment after the Kornilov attack produced wave after wave of support for the radicals with the Bolsheviks gaining most. The government was helpless as more and more of the country slipped out of its control. The Finns, Georgians, Azerbaidzhanis and Armenians sought to separate from Russia and the Ukraine had its own soviet, the Rada. The military weakness of the Kerensky regime was underlined in August when the Germans advanced and took Riga without much trouble. Petrograd stood open before them but they decided not to take that prize. Had they done so it might have aroused dormant Russian nationalist feeling. Berlin preferred to have a disunited, weak Russian state rather than to occupy the country and be forced to devote men and matériel to imposing their authority. The Eastern Front, after all, was a side show for the Germans. They were staking all on victory in the West. The parlous state of the country led to Kerensky convening a State Conference which brought together a wide range of political parties and groups, but mutual suspiciousness paralysed the will to act. In September a democratic conference was called but those willing to attend had dwindled. Both assemblies were weak apologies for the Constituent Assembly and eventually Kerensky had to concede elections scheduled for November. In the meanwhile he cobbled together a small team to see him through the interim period. In early September the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet and in the Moscow Soviet of Worker...