John Medhurst - No Less Than Mystic - A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

Given the breakdown of the Russian economy at the time, the creation of such a body was, in itself, a sensible and practical move. It was not Vesenka’s existence but its powers and personnel that were problematic. Although it contained a few representatives from the ARCWC, it was mainly a body of appointed managers and “experts”. Within weeks it had absorbed the ARCWC. Lenin was candid about this, admitting “we passed from workers’ control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy”. 20William G. Rosenberg’s study of labour relations in post-October Petrograd finds that although workers wanted state support for their plant-level initiatives they did not wish to lose control over their own destiny, which they had secured by occupation of the factories and creation of Factory Committees. “Yet almost without exception”, Rosenberg records, “spokesmen for the various chief committees and commissions set up within the Council of People’s Commissars condemned the independence and autonomy of factory and railroad committees, and assailed workers for lack of discipline”. 21

In December, the Central Council of Petrograd Factory Committees published a “Practical Manual for the Implementation of Workers’ Control of Industry”, which explained how workers’ control could be expanded into workers’ self-management. Amongst its suggestions were plans to convert war production to social production, including Factory Committees coordinating amongst themselves to ensure an adequate supply of fuel and other materials. It suggested Regional Federations of Factory Committees reporting to an All-Russian Federation. The Manual stated its ambition that “workers’ control of industry, as part of workers’ control of the totality of economic life, must not be seen in the narrow sense of a reform of institutions but in the widest possible sense: that of moving into fields previously dominated by others. Control should merge into management”. 22

In sharp contrast, the ARCWC’s “General Instructions on Workers’ Control in Conformity with the Decree of November 14th”, known as the “Counter-Manual”, laid out which functions fell to Factory Committees and which to owner-managers. Its General Instructions stated that the role of the Committees was confined to carrying out directives issued by central government agencies “specifically entrusted with the regulation of economic activities on a national scale”. The Counter-Manual stressed that Committees should not concern themselves with financial management of enterprises, nor occupy any more factories. It made explicit that “the right to issue orders related to the management, running and functioning of enterprises remains in the hands of the owner”. 23

As early as March 1918 Sovnarcom unilaterally ended workers’ control of the railways. It granted “dictatorial powers” to the Commissariat of Ways and Communications and made it explicit that “administrative technical executives” in every region and locality were answerable to the People’s Commissar only. These were “the embodiment of the whole of the dictatorial power of the proletariat in the given railways centre”. In response, the Left Communist Nikolai Ossinski wrote in Kommunist :

We stand for the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by ukases from the captains of industry […] Socialism and socialist organisation must be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all; something else will be set up: state capitalism. 24

An inevitable offshoot of the restriction of industrial democracy was the death of the most independent, rampantly democratic bodies of all: the Soviets. Alexander Rabinowitch’s granular study of Petrograd’s First City District Soviet found that “the breakdown of democratic practices and the bureaucratisation of political affairs began almost at once after October, and certainly well before the explosion of what is usually considered the civil war crisis in May and June 1918”. 25But the picture was complex. Working-class socialists struggled, in the most challenging conditions, to transform society from the bottom up. Rabinowitch concedes that in spite of the erosion of democratic practices the system of local government introduced by the District Soviet was–at least until 1919–a genuine revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, run and staffed by people of working-class origin committed to meaningful revolutionary change.

The Petrograd First City District Soviet covered 25% of the land area of Petrograd and was responsible for over half a million people. After October it entirely replaced local Dumas and municipal boards. It had its own departments for housing and resettlement; social welfare including pensions, care of orphans and food kitchens; culture and education; and a legal section to determine exactly how Sovnarcom’s decrees would be implemented. 26And yet the more governmental responsibility city and regional Soviets took on, the more their democratic freedom was curtailed. Sovnarcom was not about to let the Mensheviks or SRs run a large part of Petrograd, nor any other large city.

This was made brutally clear between March and June 1918, in “a unique period of multi-party elections to the Soviets”. 27A Sovnarcom decree of 5th January declared, “The entire country must be covered with a network of new Soviets”, and explained that all Soviets were now invested with the powers of former local and regional government. At the Seventh Party Congress in March 1918 Lenin stressed that the Soviets were the basis of a new form of state. He told the Congress:

Soviet power is a new type of state without a bureaucracy, without police, without a regular army, a democracy that brings to the fore the vanguard of the working people, gives them legislative and executive authority, makes them responsible for military defence, and creates machinery that can re-educate the masses. 28

Lenin’s vision, at least initially, was one of genuine social emancipation, of the raising up of the downtrodden through organs of self-rule. That vision died on the vine. The Soviets had real powers but Lenin never claimed they would always reflect the will of the majority of workers who could participate in them. If Soviets exercised their powers by voting for non-Bolshevik majorities or questioning the direction of Sovnarcom’s policies, that power was swiftly removed. The hostile reaction to the closing of the Constituent Assembly and the Brest-Litovsk treaty made the government back off on overt repression for a short while. This led to an explosion of democracy amongst the only bodies left in the state that could express it, and a direct challenge to the government.

In the Central Industrial Region during this period the Menshevik party won elections to every city Soviet in which elections were allowed. With the propertied classes denied the vote, this attests to a major increase in its working-class and peasant base of support in a very short time. The consequences of this support were demonstrated in the provincial town of Kaluga, where the Mensheviks demanded Bolshevik commissars provide an account of their expenditure of Soviet funds. In response, all the Menshevik deputies of the Kaluga Soviet were arrested as they sat in the Palace of Labour. Such was the local outrage that they had to be released the next day. After this their support increased again until on 8th June, when all Mensheviks and SRs were expelled permanently from the Kaluga Soviet. 29All across the region the Bolsheviks lost town and city Soviets to the Mensheviks and SRs. In Kostroma, Tver, Ryazan, Tula, Yaroslavl and other towns the results were the same. The Bolsheviks now had a choice–accept the outcome of the votes of an exclusively worker-peasant constituency or reject them and rely on state violence to cling to power. Violence was chosen.