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1. Forming a Government
- Indiana University Press
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1 Forming a Government The severe setback that Bolshevik moderates suffered at the opening session of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets did not end their efforts, or those of other left socialist groups, to form a multiparty, homogeneous socialist government at the Soviet Congress and in its immediate aftermath. During these days, they sought to restore the movement toward creation of a broad socialist coalition that had been destroyed by the violent overthrow of the Provisional Government engineered by Lenin just before the opening of the Congress of Soviets. When that failed, they strived mightily to ensure that the exclusively Bolshevik cabinet ultimately approved by the congress , the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), would be strictly accountable to the multiparty Central Executive Committee (CEC). * * * The chaotic opening session of the congress during the night and early morning of 25/26 October had adjourned after endorsing transfer of power to the soviets but before defining a new government. In effect, Russia was temporarily without a functioning national government. On 24 October, at the last meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee before the overthrow of the Provisional Government, Kamenev and Ian Berzin had been appointed to conduct negotiations with the Left SRs on their entry into a Soviet government,1 and the next day, leading Left SRs were sounded out about forming a coalition with the Bolsheviks.2 The issues of staying or withdrawing from the congress and of whether to join the new government were the main topics of discussion at Left SR fraction caucuses on 26 October. Although sympathetic to the Bolsheviks with whom they had been collaborating closely for weeks, Left SR fraction, or caucus, members remained true to the principle that the survival of the revolution dictated the formation of a broad coalition government which included all Soviet parties proportionate to their representation at the Congress of Soviets. To facilitate this out- 18 / The Defeat of the Moderates come, they insisted on the importance of maintaining links to the Bolsheviks and the revolutionary masses but rejected the idea of joining with the Bolsheviks in the government.3 At a gathering of members of the Bolshevik Central Committee and leading Left SRs in the early evening of the twentysixth , the Left SRs declined cabinet posts pending construction of a broadly inclusive socialist coalition.4 Finally, at 9:00 pm on 26 October, efforts to form a government with Left SRs having failed, Kamenev opened the second session of the Soviet Congress.To shouts of approval, he announced that the Presidium, expressing the decisions of the congress, had issued orders for the elimination of the death penalty at the front and the release of soldiers jailed for political crimes; the liberation of members of land and peasant committees jailed by the previous government; and Kerensky’s arrest. Perfunctory decrees authorizing these steps were approved by acclamation.5 The first main agenda item of the evening was to be the government question, but resistance from the Left SRs to forming a coalition with the Bolsheviks alone complicated its resolution. Evidently, in order to establish the program of a Soviet government before considering its composition, the agenda was rearranged, and Lenin took the podium to present a peace declaration to the “Peoples and Governments of All the Warring Powers.” It was Lenin’s first appearance at the Congress, and all sources agree that he received a thunderous ovation. His declaration, interrupted by explosions of applause, pledged an end to secret diplomacy and proposed that all warring peoples and their governments immediately arrange a truce and begin negotiations for a just and democratic peace, without annexations or indemnities .The declaration also provided for the right of self-determination to subject nationalities everywhere in the world, regardless of when their forced incorporation into larger states occurred.6 In a later speech, Trotsky made it plain that the declaration was primarily directed to the revolutionary masses around the world. “It is understood that we do not expect to influence imperialist governments with our proclamations but as long as they exist, we cannot ignore them,” he said. “We are placing all our hopes on our revolution unleashing the European revolution. If uprisings by the peoples of Europe do not crush imperialism, we will be crushed.”7 In the peace declaration and the ensuing discussion, Lenin took pains to emphasize the “October 24–25 revolution,” rather than the Congress of Soviets , as the source of the Soviet government’s legitimacy. Subsequently, this would be...