The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd

2. Rebels into Rulers

2 Rebels into Rulers The collapse of efforts to broaden the Sovnarkom or even make it accountable to the multiparty CEC, coupled with the unwillingness of all Russian political groups, except for the Bolsheviks and Left SRs, to recognize the legitimacy of Soviet power, meant that in the wake of the October revolution the Bolsheviks bore exclusive responsibility for maintaining order and providing municipal services, and food and fuel, to Petrograd and the surrounding region. In proclaiming the transfer of all government power in Russia to the soviets and rejecting broad political alliances, Lenin and Trotsky were not particularly concerned with the practical implications of their acts.They were absorbed, instead, with defending and consolidating Soviet power, and with stimulating the decisive worldwide socialist revolutions that they believed were necessary for the survival of the Russian revolution, by the most dramatic measures possible. The consequence of their stance, however, was that Bolsheviks in the city party organization, the Petrograd Soviet, and Petrograd district soviets were forced to transform themselves from rebels into rulers and to reshape or construct new local government and administrative bodies. Moreover, they had to do so without having given any concrete thought to how they would govern, at the same time that they were obliged to furnish personnel for service in new institutions of national government and to spread and defend the revolution around the country.These burdens led inexorably to the fundamental transformation of the Petrograd Bolshevik party organization’s composition, structure, method of operation, and relationship to its constituencies. * * * Considering that, during the October days, government power everywhere in Russia was, in principle, transferred to soviets, from top to bottom, it might have been expected that, in Petrograd, city soviets and district soviets would promptly begin taking over the responsibilities of the institutions Rebels into Rulers / 55 of local government created in the late tsarist era, such as the City Duma and district dumas, and their panoply of administrative boards (upravy).Yet, for several reasons that are important for understanding the evolution of Soviet government in Petrograd, and the relationship between it and the role of Bolshevik party committees in government, this did not occur. Take the leadership bodies of the Petrograd Soviet, for instance. Beginning as early as September 1917, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and its Presidium, in which the Mensheviks and SRs still had considerable strength, was largely paralyzed by political infighting and, in October, by the transfer of authoritative Bolsheviks such as Trotsky to the MRC and national commissariats . This dysfunction persisted until late November, when a new Executive Committee and Presidium were elected, both chaired by Zinoviev and dominated by Bolsheviks and Left SRs. Only then, more than a month after the Bolsheviks assumed formal power, did the executive organs of the Petrograd Soviet begin to play a meaningful role in governing revolutionary Russia’s capital city.1 By virtue of being chair of the newly elected Executive Committee and Presidium, Zinoviev, who had restored himself to Lenin’s good graces by abandoning the moderates, became head of the Petrograd Soviet. He was to hold that post until the end of 1925.2 In the opening stage of Soviet power the Petrograd Soviet itself met regularly. However, composed of more than a thousand elected representatives of factories and military units, several hundred of whom showed up for most meetings, it was simply too big to serve as an agency for meaningful discussion and decision making. With few exceptions, its plenary sessions were mobilization rallies aimed at disseminating information and building popular support for Bolshevik positions on national and international issues rather than serious business meetings to resolve important issues.3 The MRC took the initiative in preparing for the dissolution of the Petrograd City Duma on 9 November because of its active opposition to Soviet power.4 It was officially dissolved by order of the Sovnarkom on 16 November .5 The next day, the Petrograd Soviet adopted a resolution proposed byTrotsky calling on members of the Petrograd Soviet and district soviets to break with “the rotten bourgeois prejudice that only bourgeois civil servants could run a state,” and providing for the immediate creation of separate departments attached to the Petrograd Soviet, as well as to district soviets, “for this or that branch of [local] civil administration.”6 Nonetheless, rather than implementing this directive, elections for a new City Duma calculated to retain the bourgeois civil servants who staffed duma administrative boards were scheduled for 26 November; this...