The Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies played
a key role in the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It
was not an invention of 1917, however, but originated in the course
of the 1905 Revolution, where its role was not that conspicuous.
Yet the idea of a Soviet or Council was a new thing in Russian
revolutionary history and, perhaps, also something unique in the
history of revolution in general.
In 1905 it grew out of the burgeoning strike movement of that
year, which brought the monarchy to its knees. The number of strikers
grew from eighty thousand in April to two hundred and twenty thousand
in May. Of these, the one in Ivanovo-Voznesensk was outstanding,
being the one of longest duration in 1905 as well as the one most
nearly revolutionary in nature.
Begun two days before the news of the Tsushima straits defeat
was received and lasting ten weeks, it involved seventy thousand
men and women, virtually the whole labor force of the ''twin cities.''
Ivanovo-Voznesensk, a major textile center of Vladimir province,
located some two hundred miles northeast of Moscow and known as
the ''cotton kingdom,.' had experienced strikes in the past but
had no history of political disaffection. By May, however, a strike
sentiment was developing in Ivanovo-Voznesensk and being taken
up with enthusiasm by the workers--just why, is difficult to determine.
Perhaps economic distress had made them susceptible to political
propaganda.; perhaps growing awareness of the regime's weakening
had encouraged them to take action for economic improvement.
Whatever the reasons for the strike, when it began, the troops
available were insufficient to prevent the workers from meeting
openly in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where their names and temper induced
such fear that most of the factory owners and managers hurriedly
left the area. But soon, provincial governor Leontiev sent additional
troops, and the strikers were forced to move their meetings to
the banks of the nearby Talka River. There they worked out a rudimentary
organization for bargaining collectively and directing the strike.
Their strike committee of 150 (a quarter of whom were SD's) began,
about the middle of May, to call itself a soviet of deputies.
And gradually the soviet began to assume political powers in local
affairs, prohibiting storekeepers from raising prices, even organizing
a workers' militia. This was the first Russian soviet of the type
that was later to become a powerful revolutionary institution:
a body of workers, peasants, or soldiers deputies that arrogated
political power. It was a spontaneous phenomenon, but it corresponded
to the Menshevik notion of the revolutionary body ultimately to
take over power from the autocracy.
A similar council developed in St. Petersburg, deliberately modeling
itself on the earlier experiment. In the beginning this soviet
was no more than a strike committee with a different name, but
as the strike continued it became evident that several of its
leading members- notably the elected chairman, George Khrustalev-Nosar,
a lawyer with Menshevik ties, and its vice-chairmen, the Menshevik
Leon Trotsky and the Socialist Revolutionary Nicholas Avksentev
hoped that it would develop into something more.
In its composition, the soviet was a mixed labor and socialist
group, with a slight liberal tinge. Though not a part of the onion
of Unions, it maintained connections with it and was sympathetic
to its aims. It represented a major part of the factory labor
force of the capital, a substantial number of white-collar workers,
and a small number of professionals, mostly pharmacists. The great
majority of those it represented were not socialists, but simply
anti-government and anti-management dissidents who, for the time
being, wee willing to follow a leadership in which socialists
and intellectuals happened to predominate.
While attending to its duties of conducting and extending the
strike, the St. Petersburg Soviet found time for some other, and
quite ambitious, activities also--again reflecting the nature
of the earlier soviet. It sent a delegation of workers and intellectuals
to the municipal duma to make an extraordinarily bold, but unsuccessful,
request for funds to aid the strikers and buy arms, and it began
to issue orders for which it had no legal authority (for example,
that retail stores open for certain hours each day to meet the
basic needs of the population) .
The St. Petersburg soviet and other bodies born of the general
strike survived and grew after the strike was over. When ending
the strike in the capital, the soviet transformed itself into
a continuing organ of labor, the main purpose of which was declared
to be the continuation of the struggle for a constituent assembly.
As far as was obvious, it was simply a body that had been improvised
with little clear design in response to circumstances and, like
many others, was now deciding to prolong its functioning. It appeared
to be no more than it had been' a council of deputies elected
by the trade unions and socialist groups, which in turn elected
an executive committee of twenty-two that met frequently to make
decisions on matters concerning the workers represented by the
soviet.
On the day after the issuance of the October Manifesto, however,
it began to demonstrate that it was a body with power. Without
waiting for the government to work out the legislation necessary
to provide for civil liberties, the soviet decreed the end of
censorship and, furthermore, made its decree effective by ordering
printers to refuse to print newspapers that had been submitted
to the censor. The decree was illegal, but it was effective. And
it was the beginning of a practice that was to make yet another
change in the development of the revolution.
The idea of soviets was not conceived in St. Petersburg, but the
success of the one established in that city encouraged the growth
of similar bodies already existing and inspired the establishment
of others. In all, nearly fifty soviets of workers deputies, several
peasant soviets, and a number of short-lived military soviets
came into being in the fall of 1905. The Moscow soviet, formed
in November and representing eighty thousand workers, was next
in importance to that in the capital.
Almost all of these organizations maintained, or .ad the support
of, worker's militias or fighting detachments, and that fact lent
more than a little strength to their pretensions. In St.. Petersburg
at least six thousand workers possessed arms of some kind. Armed
workers guarded the buildings of the Free Economic society, in
which the Soviet met; and in some districts, armed workers patrolled
the streets for the declared purpose of dealing with Black Hundreds--and
for the undeclared purpose of harassing the police.
The soviets and kindred organizations soon began to establish
ties among themselves, the St. Petersburg Soviet acting as the
chief source of leadership and energy. Its representatives visited
soviets of various cities; and representatives of other soviets,
of socialist parties and of local branches of the Peasants Union
met from time to time with its leaders in St. Petersburg. Here
was an embryonic form of a national organization of the labor,
agrarian, and socialist movements, one that might become part-ally,
part-rival to the Union of Unions. In fact, such an organization
was envisioned by ambitious leaders, and an all Russian congress
of soviets was actually planned.
Though the soviets were not definite threats to the imperial government,
for about two months after the October Manifesto was issued, those
in St.. Petersburg, Moscow, and several other cities were powerful
enough to encroach boldly and with impunity upon established authority,
and to operate openly in defiance of the law and the government.
The chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet, Khrustalev-Nosar, appropriated
so much administrative control that observers saw more truth than
humor in a local newspaper's statement that the odds were about
even on the question of whether Witte would arrest him or vice
versa. These quasi-political bodies were, in fact, just one type
of outlet for the spirit that was pervading Russia in the fall
of 1905, a period often called ''freedom days.''
Freedom days blossomed again in March 1917 and with them came
a rebirth of the soviet idea. The initiative in summoning the
Petrograd Soviet of 1917 cannot be traced to any individual or
organized group, but the idea of reviving the 1905 revolutionary
assembly would seem to have occurred more or less simultaneously
to a number of radical intellectuals and labor leaders. In the
afternoon of March 12 when the mutiny of the Petrograd garrison
was in full swing, left-wing members of the Duma, political prisoners
just released from incarceration and a motley assortment of professional
men (journalists, doctors, lawyers, zemstvo employees, and so
on) forgathered in the Taurida Palace and set up the Provisional
Executive Committee of the still non-existent Petrograd Soviet.
In the evening of the same day the first plenary session of the
Soviet--a large, tumultuous assembly of uncertain provenance--was
held at the Taurida Palace and confirmed the Executive Committee.
None of the participants in this haphazard gathering, nor indeed
any one else, realized at the time that the birth of the Petrograd
soviet was to prove a turning point in the history of Russia and
of the world.
Information on the mechanics of elections to the early Soviets
is scarce and fragmentary. It was clearly impossible to devise
an orderly and uniform electoral procedure in the hectic days
of March and April, but even later, after a scheme of representation
in the Soviets was officially adopted, the situation remained
chaotic. On March 16 the Petrograd Soviet had l,300 members, a
week later nearly 3,000; of that number 800 represented factory
workers and the balance army units. The disproportion was all
the more striking because in Petrograd workers by far outnumbered
soldiers.
Rules approved by the Petrograd Soviet on March 31 provided for
one deputy for each 2,000 of either workers or soldiers, a measure
designed to reduce the assembly to a manageable size and to restore
the balance between the two elements represented in the Soviets,
but these regulations were honored more in the breach than in
the observance. Trotsky, the proud father of the 1905 Soviet,
notes that in 1917 the Soviets in Petrograd and elsewhere comprised
''numerous casual intruders, adventurers, impostors, and talkers
used to the tribune,'' who represented ''various problematic groups
and, as often as not, but their own ambitions.
The Taurida Palace was unable to accommodate the huge assembly,
and the plenary sessions of the soviet were transferred, first,
to the Mikhailovsky Theater and later to the Naval Academy. The
membership of the Soviet was highly fluid, its jurisdiction was
undefined, it had no fixed rules of procedure, and the bulk of
its members were possessed with an irresistible desire to talk;
the usefulness of the soviet as an effective organ of administration
and control, therefore, was limited and its business was actually
transacted by the Executive Committee, or, more precisely, by
a group of leaders within that body.
The Executive Committee, formed on March 12, had fourteen members,
Its chairman, Chkheidze, and one of the two vice chairmen, Skobelev,
were Mensheviks; Kerensky was the other vice chairman. The membership
of the committee rose to nearly forty by the addition of representatives
of various socialist and revolutionary groups. The first conference
of the Soviets in April reorganized the Executive committee by
adding to it delegates from provincial and army Soviets.
The enlarged committee thus assumed the character of a national
institution, but its membership of ninety proved unwieldy and
led to the formation of a permanent bureau of twenty-four members,
the actual managing board of the Soviet. The first congress of
the Soviets, which was held in June, formally established a national
executive agency by electing the All-Russian Central Executive
committee, an assembly of over 250 members which, however, was
dominated by the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet.
The example of the capital was emulated throughout the country.
Soviets of various types were rapidly set up, and by the beginning
of September their number was officially estimated at 600, representing
theoretically some 23 million voters. The complexion, jurisdiction,
and methods of local soviets were, if possible, even more casual
and haphazard than those of the Petrograd Soviet, yet their authority
was great, not perhaps because of the whole-hearted support of
the masses but because of the disintegration of state authority.
Local Soviets played an important part in dealing with local situations
and as agencies for carrying out directives from the center, but
they made no significant contribution to the shaping of national
policies, which were determined by a small group of leaders at
the head of, first, the Petrograd Execute committee and, later,
the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
In the early weeks of the revolution the social democrats (both
Menshevik and Bolshevik) and the socialist revolutionaries who
controlled the Petrograd Executive Committee shared the belief
that a degree of cooperation between socialist and liberal forces
was essential to prevent the restoration of the old regime; and
the Provisional Government, which was to include two representatives
of the soviet (Chkheidze and Kerensky) was formed by the provisional
committee of the Duma after consultation with, and with the approval
of, the Executive committee.
A plenary session of the Soviet held in the morning of March 15
repudiated the agreement, however, and the Executive Committee,
reversing itself, passed a resolution prohibiting socialists from
serving in a bourgeois cabinet. Chkheidze vowed to hold to this
decision, but Kerensky's passionate appeal to the plenary session
of the Soviet resulted in the approval, by acclamation, of his
participation in the Provisional Government. The interdict of
the Executive Committee was not rescinded, yet Kerensky remained
both minister of justice and vice chairman of the Executive Committee.
At the time of its inception and, indeed, for weeks to come the
Soviet showed no intention of superseding the Provisional Government.
The slogan "all power to the soviets" was coined in
March by the garrison of the Kronstadt naval base. At first it
met with little response in the capital, although the Bolshevik's
Pravda denounced the Provisional Government as a ''government
of capitalists and landowners'' and called for a ''democratic
republic." to be established by the Constituent Assembly.
With the return to Petrograd of a group of exiled Bolshevik leaders
in the middle of March, these attacks became less virulent. The
attitude of the Soviet towards the Provisional Government was
formulated in an ambiguously worded resolution of March 16: The
Soviet would support the policies of the Provisional Government
in so far as they correspond to the interest of the proletariat
and of the broad democratic masses of the people.''
A contact committee was appointed by the Executive Committee to
inform the Soviet of the intentions and activities of the Provisional
Government, to inform the latter of the demands of the revolutionary
people, to bring pressure upon the Provisional Government in order
to ensure the satisfaction of these demands, and to exercise ceaseless
control over the execution of appropriate measures''.
The resulting situation was not cooperation, but what came to
be known as the regime of ''dual power", the Soviet relentlessly
encroaching upon the prerogative and functions of the Provisional
Government. During the period of their uneasy co-existence both
the Provisional Government and the Soviet evolved towards the
left, but this trend was less pronounced in the case of the former
than of the latter and, with the final breakdown of the army and
the flood tide of social unrest and economic disorganization,
inexorably led to the advent to power of the more extreme, resolute,
and ruthless political faction--the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin.