Ten Days That Shook The World (40 page)

On the afternoon of November 25th Tchernov arrived in hot haste from Moghilev, summoned by the Executive Committee. Only two months before considered an extreme revolutionist, and very popular with the peasants, he was now called to check the dangerous drift of the Congress toward the Left. Upon his arrival Tchernov was arrested and taken to Smolny, where, after a short conversation, he was released.

His first act was to bitterly rebuke the Executive Committee for leaving the Congress. They agreed to return, and Tchernov entered the hall, welcomed with great applause by the majority, and the hoots and jeers of the Bolsheviki.

"Comrades! I have been away. I participated in the Conference of the Twelfth Army on the question of calling a Congress of all the Peasant delegates of the armies of the Western Front, and I know very little about the insurrection which occurred here--"

Zinoviev rose in his seat, and shouted, "Yes, you were away-for a few minutes!" Fearful tumult. Cries, "Down with the Bolsheviki!"

Tchernov continued. "The accusation that I helped lead an army on Petrograd has no foundation, and is entirely false. Where does such an accusation come from? Show me the source!"

Zinoviev: "Izviestia and Dielo Naroda-your own paper -that's where it comes from!"

Tchernov's wide face, with the small eyes, waving hair and greyish beard, became red with wrath, but he controlled himself and went on. "I repeat, I know practically nothing about what has happened here, and I did not lead any army except this army, (he pointed to the peasant delegates), which I am largely responsible for bringing here!" Laughter, and shouts of "Bravo!"

"Upon my return I visited Smolny. No such accusation was made against me there.... After a brief conversation I left-and that's all! Let any one present make such an accusation!"

An uproar followed, in which the Bolsheviki and some of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were on their feet all at once, shaking their fists and yelling, and the rest of the assembly tried to yell them down.

"This is an outrage, not a session!" cried Tchernov, and he left the hall; the meeting was adjourned because of the noise and disorder....

Meanwhile, the question of the status of the Executive Committee was agitating all minds. By declaring the assembly "Extraordinary Conference," it had been planned to block the reelection of the Executive Committee. But this worked both ways; the Left Socialist Revolutionists decided that if the Congress had no power over the Executive Committee, then the Executive Committee had no power over the Congress. On November 25th the assembly resolved that the powers of the Executive Committee be assumed by the Extraordinary Conference, in which only members of the Executive who had been elected as delegates might vote....

The next day, in spite of the bitter opposition of the Bolsheviki, the resolution was amended to give all the members of the Executive Committee, whether elected as delegates or not, voice and vote in the assembly.

On the 27th occurred the debate on the Land question, which revealed the differences between the agrarian program of the Bolsheviki and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

Kolchinsky, for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, outlined the history of the Land question during the Revolution. The first Congress of Peasants' Soviets, he said, had voted a precise and formal resolution in favor of putting the landed estates immediately into the hands of the Land Committees. But the directors of the Revolution, and the bourgeois in the Government, had insisted that the question could not be solved until the Constituent Assembly met.... The second period of the Revolution, the period of "compromise," was signaled by the entrance of Tchernov into the Cabinet. The peasants were convinced that now the practical solution of the Land question would begin; but in spite of the imperative decision of the first Peasant Congress, the reactionaries and conciliators in the Executive Committee had prevented any action. This policy provoked a series of agrarian disorders, which appeared as the natural expression of impatience and thwarted energy on the part of the peasants. The peasants understood the exact meaning of the Revolution-they tried to turn words into action....

"The recent events," said the orator, "do not indicate a simple riot, or a 'Bolshevik adventure,' but on the contrary, a real popular rising, which has been greeted with sympathy by the whole country....

"The Bolsheviki in general took the correct attitude toward the Land question; but in recommending that the peasants seize the land by force, they committed a profound error.... From the first days, the Bolsheviki declared that the peasants should take over the land 'by revolutionary mass action.' This is nothing but anarchy; the land can be taken over in an organized manner.... For the Bolsheviki it was important that the problems of the Revolution should be solved in the quickest possible manner-but the Bolsheviki were not interested in how these problems were to be solved....

"The Land decree of the Congress of Soviets is identical in its fundamentals with the decisions of the first Peasants' Congress. Why then did not the new Government follow the tactics outlined by that Congress? Because the Council of People's Commissars wanted to hasten the settlement of the Land question, so that the Constituent Assembly would have nothing to do....

"But also the Government saw that it was necessary to adopt practical measures, so without further reflection, it adopted the Regulations for Land Committees, thus creating a strange situation; for the Council of People's Commissars abolished private property in land, but the Regulations drawn up by the Land Committees are based on private property.... However, no harm has been done by that; for the Land Committees are paying no attention to the Soviet decrees, but are putting into operation their own practical decisions-decisions based on the will of the vast majority of the peasants....

"These Land Committees are not attempting the legislative solution of the Land question, which belongs to the Constituent Assembly alone.... But will the Constituent Assembly desire to do the will of the Russian peasants? Of that we cannot be sure.... All we can be sure of is that the revolutionary determination of the peasants is now aroused, and that the Constituent will be forced to settle the Land question the way the peasants want it settled.... The Constituent Assembly will not dare to break with the will of the people...."

Followed him Lenin, listened to now with absorbing intensity. "At this moment we are not only trying to solve the Land question, but the question of Social Revolution-not only here in Russia, but all over the world. The Land question cannot be solved independently of the other problems of the Social Revolution.... For example, the confiscation of the landed estates will provoke the resistance not only of Russian land-owners, but also of foreign capital-with whom the great landed properties are connected through the intermediary of the banks....

"The ownership of the land in Russia is the basis for immense oppression, and the confiscation of the land by the peasants is the most important step of our Revolution. But it cannot be separated from the other steps, as is clearly manifested by the stages through which the Revolution has had to pass. The first stage was the crushing of autocracy and the crushing of the power of the industrial capitalists and land-owners, whose interests are closely related. The second stage was the strengthening of the Soviets and the political compromise with the bourgeoisie. The mistake of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries lies in the fact that at that time they did not oppose the policy of compromise, because they held the theory that the consciousness of the masses was not yet fully developed....

"If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.... The Socialist political party-this is the vanguard of the working-class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative.... But in order to lead the wavering, the comrades Left Socialist Revolutionaries themselves must stop hesitating....

"In July last a series of open breaks began between the popular masses and the 'compromisers'; but now, in November, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries are still holding out their hand to Avksentiev, who is pulling the people with his little finger.... If Compromise continues, the Revolution disappears. No compromise with the bourgeoisie is possible; its power must be absolutely crushed....

"We Bolsheviki have not changed our Land program; we have not given up the abolition of private property in the land, and we do not intend to do so. We adopted the Regulations for Land Committees,-which are not based on private property at all-because we want to accomplish the popular will in the way the people have themselves decided to do it, so as to draw closer the coalition of all the elements who are fighting for the Social Revolution.

"We invite the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to enter that coalition, insisting, however, that they cease looking backward, and that they break with the 'conciliators' of their party....

"As far as the Constituent Assembly is concerned, it is true, as the preceding speaker has said, that the work of the Constituent will depend on the revolutionary determination of the masses. I say, 'Count on that revolutionary determination, but don't forget your gun!'"

Lenin then read the Bolshevik resolution:

The Peasants' Congress, fully supporting the Land decree of November 8th... approves of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Russian Republic, established by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

The Peasants' Congress... invites all peasants unanimously to sustain that law, and to apply it immediately themselves; and at the same time invites the peasants to appoint to posts and positions of responsibility only persons who have proved, not by words but by acts, their entire devotion to the interests of the exploited peasant-workers, their desire and their ability to defend these interests against all resistance on the part of the great land-owners, the capitalists, their partisans and accomplices....

The Peasants' Congress, at the same time, expresses its conviction that the complete realization of all the measures which make up the Land decree can only be successful through the triumph of the Workers' Social Revolution, which began November 7th, 1917; for only the Social Revolution can accomplish the definite transfer, without possibility of return, of the land to the peasant-workers, the confiscation of model farms and their surrender to the peasant communes, the confiscation of agricultural machinery belonging to the great land-owners, the safe-guarding of the interests of the agricultural workers by the complete abolition of wage-slavery, the regular and methodical distribution among all regions of Russia of the products of agriculture and industry, and the seizure of the banks (without which the possession of land by the whole people would be impossible, after the abolition of private property), and all sorts of assistance by the State to the workers....

For these reasons the Peasants' Congress sustains entirely the Revolution of November 7th... as a social revolution, and expresses its unalterable will to put into operation, with whatever modifications are necessary, but without any hesitation, the social transformation of the Russian Republic.

The indispensable conditions of the victory of the Social Revolution, which alone will secure the lasting success and the complete realization of the Land decree, is the close union of the peasant-workers with the industrial working-class, with the proletariat of all advanced countries. From now on, in the Russian Republic, all the organization and administration of the State, from top to bottom, must rest on that union. That union, crushing all attempts, direct or indirect, open or dissimulated, to return to the policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie-conciliation, damned by experience, with the chiefs of bourgeois politics-can alone insure the victory of Socialism throughout the world....

The reactionaries of the Executive Committee no longer dared openly to appear. Tchernov, however, spoke several times, with a modest and winning impartiality. He was invited to sit on the platform.... On the second night of the Congress an anonymous note was handed up to the chairman, requesting that Tchernov be made honorary President. Ustinov read the note aloud, and immediately Zinoviev was on his feet, screaming that this was a trick of the old Executive Committee to capture the convention; in a moment the hall was one bellowing mass of waving arms and angry faces, on both sides.... Nevertheless, Tchernov remained very popular.

In the stormy debates on the Land question and the Lenin resolution, the Bolsheviki were twice on the point of quitting the assembly, both times restrained by their leaders.... It seemed to me as if the Congress were hopelessly deadlocked.

But none of us knew that a series of secret conferences were already going on between the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviki at Smolny. At first the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had demanded that there be a Government composed of all the Socialist parties in and out of the Soviets, to be responsible to a People's Council, composed of an equal number of delegates from the Workers' and Soldiers' organization, and that of the Peasants, and completed by representatives of the City Dumas and the Zemstvos; Lenin and Trotsky were to be eliminated, and the Military Revolutionary Committee and other repressive organs dissolved.

Wednesday morning, November 28th, after a terrible all-night struggle, an agreement was reached. The Tsay-ee-kah, composed of 108 members, was to be augmented by 108 members elected proportionally from the Peasants' Congress; by 100 delegates elected directly from the Army and the Fleet; and by 50 representatives of the Trade Unions (35 from the general Unions, 10 Railway Workers, and 5 from the Post and Telegraph Workers). The Dumas and Zemstvos were dropped. Lenin and Trotsky remained in the Government, and the Military Revolutionary Committee continued to function.