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15 Price of Survival During the culminating stage of the October revolution in Petrograd, Lenin’s demand that power be seized at once won out over the Bolshevik moderates’ more patient and cautious plan of undermining the Provisional Government gradually and linking its formal removal to the action of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Yet, despite this initial, seemingly decisive setback, the moderates continued to fight for their goals which, it should be reemphasized, were enshrined in the Bolsheviks’ pre-October political program. Firmly convinced that for the Bolsheviks to maintain an independent , ultra-radical course, as Lenin and Trotsky demanded, would be suicidal for the revolution, they sought support for broadening the government at meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee and Petersburg Committee , and in the party’s CEC fraction. Moreover, together with the Left SRs, the Menshevik-Internationalists, and smaller left socialist parties, they stood firmly for the preservation of civil liberties and for the accountability of the Sovnarkom to the more broadly representative CEC, as stipulated by the soviet congress, at CEC plenary sessions, and, most important, at the emergency talks on the formation of a broad socialist coalition government sponsored by Vikzhel. At first, the efforts of moderate Bolsheviks at the Vikzhel talks were impeded by the determination of the Mensheviks and SRs to exclude Lenin and Trotsky from any future government, if not to reverse the October revolution entirely. Subsequently, they were undercut by popular enthusiasm for the program of the soviets, the early military successes of revolutionary forces, and the defection of the Left SRs to the Leninists. Indisputably , as well, the moderates were outmaneuvered by Lenin at every turn. Their ouster from control of the Bolshevik fraction in the Constituent Assembly in December 1917 marked the end of their collective fight against the Leninists, and an end to their existence as an influential, intraparty national grouping. 390 / Celebration amid Terror Historians generally have been dismissive of the moderate Bolsheviks, emphasizing their opposition to Lenin’s triumphant radicalism before and after the Bolshevik seizure of power and ignoring their critically important role as stewards of the party during Lenin’s extended absence from Petrograd in the summer and early fall of 1917. Undeniably, however, without the moderate Bolsheviks’ forceful and clever political strategy during the run-up to the October days, which was supported byTrotsky and other radical Bolshevik leaders who shared Lenin’s theoretical views and goals but were wary of his violent tactics, Lenin’s belated military moves against the Provisional Government on 25 October would not have been feasible. Then, too, the moderates were certainly not the small minority depicted in Soviet accounts. Their views on revolutionary strategy and goals were widely shared inside and outside the party. In retrospect, their thinking about the long-term dangers of an exclusively Bolshevik assumption of power in backward Russia appears very wise. In line with their assumptions, the decisive uprisings of the European proletariat that Lenin andTrotsky believed were the precondition for building socialism in Russia failed to materialize. The Bolsheviks’ struggles for survival during the first year of Soviet power in Petrograd provide valuable insights into the dynamics of the earliest stage in the process leading to the consolidation of the highly centralized , ultra-authoritarian Bolshevik political system in Soviet Russia.The answer to the central historiographical question posed at the start of this book is clear. Neither revolutionary ideology nor an established pattern of dictatorial behavior are of much help to explain fundamental changes in the character and political role of the Bolshevik party, or of soviets in Petrograd, between November 1917 and November 1918, although the impact of both cannot be entirely discounted.The fact is that the Petrograd Bolsheviks had to transform themselves from rebels into rulers without benefit of an advance plan or even a concept. Most significant in shaping the earliest evolution of party and soviet bodies, their relationship to each other, and the Soviet political system generally, were the realities the Bolsheviks faced in their often seemingly hopeless struggle for survival. So it was that, in the aftermath of “October,” ignoring the principle that all government power should be transferred to local soviets, Petrograd’s new authorities did not dissolve the Petrograd City Duma until it became apparent that it had become a national center for opposing them. Moreover, not until forced to act because of the dissolution of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) and strikes by civil servants did the Bolshevikdominated Petrograd Soviet...

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